Looking for Cases!

To the venerable and lustrous supreme crit justices, as well as their meager and addle-pated bailiff. I present thee with the case of the NEWSIES Musical anniversary. Last week, my main D&D gaming group got together to celebrate our 3-year anniversary of the current campaign we are playing through. It is set in a magical variant of Earth and is a sequel to a previous campaign. For this anniversary session, our DM decided to set it in New York, where we would be infiltrating the headquarters of one of the BBEG's highest ranking lieutenants (a PC in the previous campaign). The issue arose in the party's deliberations of how exactly to infiltrate this base. As we were in New York, one of the fellow party members presented the idea of dressing up as the cast of Disney's musical the NEWSIES and put on a performance to be allowed inside. The party agreed to this, and the DM called for a group performance check, of which we ended up with a 30-average. We began to act it out, and ended up spending half an hour acting/singing up until page 12 of the 116-page script. During that time, the DM got quiet and ended the session right after that had concluded. We have not talked a lot since then and I fear we may have offended her. So, I ask this court: was the party in wrong? Should we have not taken the bit that far, and did we derail the DM's plans too much? I humbly await your verdict.

To the other people and the handsome balof jake. I have 67 battery please forgive ~the guy who hates the jake haters

To the luminous judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the rather dull bailiff Jake: I present the case of the disengaging rogue. After wanting to try D&D for a while thanks to NADDPOD and Dimension 20, I finally checked out my local game store and signed up for an Adventurer’s League session earlier this year. During the game, our rogue used his bonus action to disengage from the enemy next to him, moved 10 feet to another enemy and attacked, then continued his movement to be out of reach. When DM said he would provoke an opportunity attack from the second enemy because the rogue disengaged from the first enemy before entering then trying to leave the space of the second, the rogue argued that disengage counts for his whole turn, and that the wording of cunning action didn’t say it applied to only one enemy. After some heated back and forth, the DM eventually stuck to his ruling, the rogue took a hit from the opportunity attack, and we moved on. We ultimately went on to defeat the enemies, but the rogue player was noticeably quieter for the rest of the session. Since I was (and still kinda am) new to D&D, I genuinely don’t know who’s right or if I could have done anything to help. So I ask: are rogues able to use one disengage bonus action to enter and leave multiple enemies’ threatened areas, or does it only apply the first time in a turn?

Oh holy ecclesiasts of Dice Christ, I bring to your anointed feet a confession from decades in the past. In high school, around the time George W. Bush crit those towers, I was dming a wildly unbalanced game for random assorted friends on a regular basis, taking whoever could meet up for a session whenever we had the time and space. My best bud was a huge Final Fantasy 7 fan and begged for Cloud Strife’s buster sword as an in game item, and after several days of telling me how cool it would be, he slipped my broke ass a twenty dollar bill and I shamefully made that shit happen. His FF7 insert character found a silvered masterwork oversized greatsword that granted him the ability to wield weapons a category larger than normal, and we went on with our lives with the brutally bold faced bribery staining our endeavors indelibly. Years later, I confessed how lame I felt that bribe was to my buddy and I paid him back his twenty dollars, but I still remember taking that filthy money when I begin populating treasure tables. Voices of the almighty Dice Messiah, is there a way to climb back to modesty from the depths of my iniquity, or am I forever stuck a lowly money grubbing worm, only fit to irritate the collar of that bullshit feckless bailiff Jake? I await your judgement humbly.

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy. Oh, and Jake — good to see you, grab us some waters? You’re the best. A few weeks back, I had to miss a D&D session after my girlfriend got some bad news. The timing was rough — that same night a new player was joining our campaign. The DM decided to go ahead so they could meet the other player (we are now a party of 4 including the dm) and “get a lay of the land.” I totally understood and was happy they could still make it work. Now this new player wanted to play a sorcerer who is adamantly against the idea of undead Unfortunately, my character happens to be a necromancy wizard who captains a ship with his undead crew — the same sailors who died beside him and now sail again at his command. The DM asked if I was fine with this conflict and I agreed thinking we could have some good banter around the table. However when I returned for the next session, I was told my entire crew had been slain in my absence. And not only that, their heads were tossed into the sea with no chance to retrieve them. So, Justices, I ask this humble court: am I justified in feeling like I’ve been robbed of a crucial piece of my character — or must I simply “roleplay” my grief away?

To the honourable justices and my worstie Jake, I have been dming for about 7 years, often for my good friend (and now housemate), Birdo (alias). Every campaign or one-shot I have run for Birdo, they have asked to play a modron, and every time I have said no, because a) I mostly don’t run games set in the forgotten realms and b) modrons bring a very specific tone and lore implications I don’t usually want to deal with. This time however, I am running The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, a module set in the forgotten realms with a very silly tone, so I told Birdo they could play a modron this one time. Birdo’s character was SIX, a modron sorcerer described as being ‘fleshy’, ‘throbbing’ and being a generally cursed cube with ‘one big wet eye’. I was not quiet about hating Six. At level 2, they entered a meenlock lair. My players have historically enjoyed tough combats and complained if the stakes don’t feel high enough, so I put them against 4 meenlocks with 5 minions and took out the stated ‘non lethal damage’ the meenlocks should have been doing. 3/5 players went to death saves and Six, the character my friend has wanted to play for 7 years, died at level 2, 4 sessions in. Justices, I felt awful. But these things happen, my case is about Birdo’s new character concept, Seven, another modron, this time evil and a cannibal (because Seven ate Nine), with fleshy tentacles. Do I have to let birdo play a second modron? I hate modrons so much. P.S. Birdo insisted on rolling Six’s death saves with a notoriously cursed D20

To the Fellowship of Dice Christ, I have a confession. My party and I are currently in a long running on and off campaign of 3+ years. 8 am the forever DM. They just hit level 17 with the goal of hitting level 20, this is the highest ive ever let my players level up (I prefer level 12 and below). I've learned I'm terrible at balancing high level fights and often in combat I fudge saving throws like crazy! Oh? A fireball? 3 of the 4 pass their saving throws. Oh? Your AC is 20? They got a 27 to hit *shoulder shrug Dice christ. Please give me the strength to not fudge my dice and for myself to do my homework on making a balanced encounter 🙏

Hello roguelite bailiffs and first run justice I present the case of the abandoned combat partner for a story moment. I have a cyberpunk game going with Me the Abandonee named Law and my signifigant other, Lexi. Juicy story moments lead to storming the corp building that owned Lexis life through a truman show esue contract. She rushes to chase down her agent meanwhile me and Law are stopped by beefy bodyguards. Before this we learned how to see through timelines and using this power made drugs. I gave this to Law so that he could fight the two and chase after. I catch up and shoot down the helicopter she was going to use to escape and lexi gets to kill the woman whos manipulated her whole life while its streamed through the net for all to see. However Law was left to fight two beefy boys. The drugs let you succeed but you take a minus 1 at a later time for each auto success. Justices he has a minus 34 bank that the dm can damocles him with. These can also be incrementally used. Was I in the wrong to leave him to fend for himself so I could help my S.O gurantee her big story moment or do you think this behavior is acceptable and he should stop reminding me the count every session.

I think you guys might have a case against this game show called The Perfect Line. It’s basically “when did things come out”.

Hello honorable justices this is not a case but I’m simply speaking on behalf of all listeners of dnd court. I would simply like to mention that we want to listen to more cases and would like to propose an idea for either longer dnd court episodes or every now and then just make one dnd court mega episode that reads and judges as many cases as possible. Just saying we love dnd court and want more of it.

To the almighty Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy. Oh hey Jake didn't see you there, can you grab us some coffees? You're the best. Justices, I bring to you the case of the Roleplay Repeater. My friend DM'd a session for us awhile back, we all brought adult beverages (badass, I know) and about halfway into the session he had a few too many beers and with a glazed look in his eyes he only mumbled the word "roleplay" for I kid you not, almost an hour until we ended the session early, it was super awkward but all good. Ayear or so later, he DM'd a classic "castle heist" one shot after we finished my campaign and after talking to all of his NPC's/visiting all of the shops in town he just says "you can't go to the castle yet...roleplay." For, you guessed it, the next hour, with nothing lined up for us. It even got to the point where our Druid just started killing NPC's out of boredom, Mind you, we were all sober this time. Justices, am I in the wrong for not wanting this friend to DM for us anymore?

To the exceptional justices and their lamentable pal, Ja. I present the case of the fallen princess and her protector. I’m a DM running a homebrew campaign for five players. Atop a Mesoamerican-style pyramid, an evil wizard controlled an arcane device that enslaved hundreds. The field below swarmed with his mind-controlled laborers, guarded by 5e Shadows that I buffed-up for this specific encounter. I described how one servant dropped a massive stone on their foot, causing immense pain which broke them free of the spell, only to be immediately drained into a husk by the Shadows. And so I hoped my players had been warned: proceed with caution. But our rash teenage warrior princess decided to cast Gust of Wind at the servants, thinking it would free them from the spell and distract the Shadows. Alas, dear justices, Gust of Wind deals no damage and thus none awoke. Instead, the roaring gale drew the Shadows straight to the party. Our brave bard leapt to defend her but was instantly slain by my chonky Shadows, who drain 1d6 from a target’s lowest ability score, instead of 1d4 from Strength. The princess fell soon after and the survivors barely managed to defeat the wizard while mourning the loss of their allies. It was tragic, dramatic, and even bonding. The bard’s death speech (which I set to the Gladiator soundtrack) left us all misty-eyed. To this day, my players still razz me about the “5e Shadows” that wiped two heroes in two rounds. So tell me, dear justices, was I in the wrong, or should they have chosen a different strategy?

To the strong and powerful league of justices (supermurph, wonderaxford, and batwell) and that bald headed goofy ahh lex luthor lookin bailiff. My case is a tragic one. I joined in halfway through a long running campaign where my character was a hobgoblin barbarian monk reskinned to be a giant dog who’d been experimented on by wizards. I made this character specifically because it filled the holes the party had. I did great in combat but my role was mostly a damage sponge. The problem was I realized i had no roleplay opportunities as a giant monster dog outside of hiding and not talking when we went into towns. one day during travel my dm explained in great detail a sunken ship in the middle of the desert. it very obviously sounds like he wants us to check it out but my party refuses. I decided to use my insane speed and a few ki points to run the 350feet both ways to collect the treasure. They lambasted me for hours until they realized they didn’t have money for their gear in the next town. Justices. THEY ALL WANT MY GOLD NOW! They’re saying they always share and it’s a communal pot but I don’t need this gear. it’s all armor and potions that i can’t/wont use. Please oh wise justices tell my friends they’re being evil and that Theo Clive (the monster dog) is a good boy who deserves respect.

To the glorious justices and the well prepared bailiff. I used to play in an online pathfinder game with friends. Out of this group I was the least experienced in actual play. To this point the game master and one other person in the party design and teach table top game systems. During session zero, aside from the standard stuff the GM announced an interesting way that he plays. All perception and investigation checks that the players make will be rolled by the GM behind the screen, the number not told to the player and the GM gives the answer based on the roll that no one else sees… I did not stay in the group very long for outside reasons but this was A. Very confusing during gameplay, not knowing irl what was true(a bad perception check led to a lie about who we saw, and something absurd could be true so I was lost) and B. Less fun. Your excellences, is this immersive game play that just didn’t tickle my fancy or was this some shenanigans?

To the bone dry justices and the slightly soggy bailiff, I bring to you the case of the OP spider. I’ll cut straight to the point. It was our final session. I was playing an Elven Warlock named Alanis, as it is a dope ass name and whoever came up with it is quite cool. We were trying to finish up the quest we were given and had ended up in a field equidistant from a wizard tower (our end goal) and a random city. So we determine to go to the tower. This was apparently contrary to what the dm had planed. The DM groaned a bit about us not going to his cool city, then got a funny look in his eye and narrated my character’s shoe getting stuck in the mud. So I narrate taking my foot out, pulling out the shoe, and then putting my foot back in. SURPRISE! In the shoe was a spider that then bit me and poisoned me without a save. That poison PARALYZED ME INSTANTLY and the DM was adamant that I would be unable to move for the next three days. And that’s how the campaign ended. A full year of play finished with my character paralyzed in the mud with no story arcs completed. So I ask you this, was the DM right to “railroad” us in such a way? All in all it doesn’t really matter, this is just a thing that will come to mind every once in a while and I’ll get pissed off all over again. I await your response. PS: I have many examples of this dm being……interesting in his rulings but that is a case for another day

To the delegates of Dice Christ and Dan, I come asking for forgiveness. My party and I play with opt in massive damage rules so if an attack deals more than half your hp, you can opt in to roll on a massive damage table to have something extra happen, like a scar or the loss of a limb. Basically a simple way to add more flavor to combat. Through a series of unfortunate accidents, the rouge ended up 1v1ing a six headed hydra. The hydra, through six attacks, dealt more than half the rouges hp. Before I could say otherwise, my player joyfully exclaimed, “Hell Yeah! I love consequences!!” And then rolled before I ever told her to. What she rolled was to have her characters arm ripped off. Judges…she was overjoyed. She was so excited that I couldn’t bring myself to clarify that because the hydra had six attacks, it wouldn’t count as massive damage because it has to be done in a single attack. Instead of playing by the rules, I simply narrated the hydra ripping off the rouges arm and have carried this lie with me ever since. It weighs on my soul. May I ever be forgiven?

To the auspicious judges and the precious little 7 pound, 3 ounce baby Baliff I bring you the case of the Ms. Piggy, the Queen of Ashes. I was a part of a high-lethality Mad Max x Muppets one shot in which I played Ms. Piggy as a reskined half-orc barbarian which, I'll fully admt, is a broken build in this world where everyone is under the vulnerability condition ('cause Muppets) except for the one weird human character in every Muppets movie... (We went with Elijah Wood, if anyone is curious). The DM made three terrible mistakes, 1. Offering an ability called "witness me" in which a character can do an all out, final attack that does double damage in exchange for their life. 2. Giving the party 4 granades (reskinned fireball spells) and 3. Killing. My. Kermy. I knew that as soon as the squishy bard Kermit went down, Ms. Piggy's one and only mission was to pull a witness me and crunch down on a grenade the second the Big Bad (Elmo) was in range. What I did not know was that the rest of the party had the exact same plan in mind. Judges, before Elmo could even get a single word of his villainous speech out, the lair and everything in it was reduced to atoms by 4 simultaneously cast, double damage, kamikaze fire balls resulting in 556 points of damage, with the help of crits. It was a great way to end a long session and we little chaos gremlins were atwitter with giggles. However, your honors, I feel Ms. Piggy was robbed of an incredible set up. A fellow party member pointed out that as a half-orc, Ms. Piggy had access to relentless endurance which means that she would actually have only gone down to 1 hp. Picture it, your honors. Ms. Piggy shakily standing amidt ruin and ash as her felt flesh melts off her metal frame. Sounds like a pretty good villain origin right? Well, the DM disagreed and refused to take the tiny l after being served a feast L-stew. This was, of course, in jest, and the party knows in our hearts that Ms. Piggy is out there going insane in her kingdom of ashes. But, I'm curious. Were we pushing our luck by exploiting this loophole in the "witness me" rule or is the DM being a real Jake about this? I humbly await your ruling. PS. I am a 6 ft, 250 pound black man and yes, I did the Ms. Piggy voice the whole time and it was LIBERATING!!! I called going to a rage getting War Horny. I am forever free.

To the Benevolent Hierophant Justices and the stink goblin pee pee boy. I bring to thee a case of dragons, but no dungeons. I am running a campaign for my beloved and her two closest friends. The campaign is going swimmingly and they're all loving it. My love is playing a Dwarf Fairy Ranger and I've made her a star player in the world to bring her into this new adventure in storytelling and fiction that I love so deeply. The issue comes in exactly what type of fiction it is. My partner has requested a pure vanilla fantasy experience, this is because while I love fantasy I am a sci-fi nerd at heart. I have delivered. It is pure unadulterated fantasy. We have been playing for a few months and everything is going great. However, my partner RECENTLY was being very thankful and expressed gratitude that there wasn't any time travel and other types of storytelling that confuse them... My plot is entirely hinged on time travel. I thought that time travel might be okay for fantasy, because there's stuff in Arthurian legend. Have I tarnished my beloveds request for a pure fantasy story? Do I try to sweatily rewrite it or follow through? Help me Pee pee boy et al. You're my only hope.

To the evervescent Judges and–... Ew, what is that? I bring you the case of the undying cleric that ended our 3 year campaign. Years ago, I was in a group with a a group of friends I'd known since highschool. One player was my friend "Dave" who played a teenage cleric who was incredibly reckless. He did absolutely insane things and usually rolled terribly, so the DM did backflips to try and get him out of danger. The DM refused to kill him no matter how much he deserved it. Judges. It got ridiculous. At one point we were trekking through some snowy mountains and we got attacked by an abominable yeti. The ranged cleric decided to get right up close to it and "give him a wet willy." When asked; Why? "Dave" said, Why not? He proceeded to get a full round of attacks on him but stopped short of killing him because it, quote from the DM, "Got distracted and went back to its cave" and the combat ended. This isn't the only time the DM spared the foolish "Dave". He went on to nearly die from his own stupidity five more times before me and my fellow players got annoyed at the lack of consequences and our apparent immortality as a party since the DM did not want to kill us. The DM was very excited about his story. It was really cool, very thorough and he clearly had a plan for all of the players stories. I ask judges, should the DM have relinquished his story beats for "Dave" instead of forcing him to live, when he clearly deserved a quick pathetic end? I throw them at your mercy because I really liked my PC in that campaign and I miss her.

To my celebrity crush judges, and Jake, I present you not a case- but a request: My coworker bestie and fellow naddpole, Taylor, is about to DM a curse of strahd campaign for me, her boyfriend- Mike, and two of their good friends. Mike is planning on playing a paladin, but is requesting to worship…the flying spaghetti monster. Please help us avoid disaster by persuading him to make a better choice- and maybe give us some other ideas for atheistic cosmic deities. (Yes, I know the DM can just say no…but sometimes you want to give a reason, or a “no, but”)

To the illustrious judges and their AI bailiff-bot Judy, About a year ago, my good friend - let's call him Timbo - invited me to join in his D&D campaign. I had been wanting to play D&D for years but never had a group so this invitation felt like a dream come true!! Unfortunately for me, as soon as my character was introduced Timbo's character was immediately hostile because my paladin worshipped a different god than his. Timbo joked above table that he would have outright attacked me if he wasn't so low on spell slots. I was able to diffuse the situation, but the tension that lingered between our two characters was zero fun to play out and it was honestly a huge bummer of a first ever session. That campaign fizzled out shortly after, and the beginning of a new campaign felt like a fresh start. Imagine my utter befuddlement when the moment mine and Timbo's characters meet in this new campaign, his attempts to attack mine. A heated text exchange ensued between myself and Timbo where he said that he was being true to his character and that it's what his character would have done. Judges, my question to you is this. With a third campaign looming on the horizon, how do I prepare for another potential skirmish with Timbo's character? Right now I'm leaning towards min-maxing the shit out of my character and prepping for a fight to the death, but I fear this may be straying from Dice Christ's light. I await your wise and impartial judgement.

To the lofty and omniscient judges I bring to you the case of the finger-printed felon. 'Sup Jake. Early in my tenure as a DM, I was DMing a homebrew campaign for my two friends; Klik an aarokocra monk (surprisingly not the problem), and Binbik a gnome rogue styled as the Joker. They were traveling to a military outpost to gain intel on a noble they suspected of plotting a coup. On the road they stopped in friendly little town with a tavern where they chatted with the patrons and stayed the night. All was going great until Binbik said he wanted to poison the cask of ale the innkeeper was serving from "just because." Being a sneaky rogue, he succeeded wildly on a stealth and a sleight of hand check. The party left before dawn the next day and made it to the fort. Shortly after arriving, a messenger came from the village with the bottle of poison that had been left behind saying that several townspeople had been killed by poisoning. The commander questioned my players but Klik wasn't aware of what happened and Binbik succeeded his deception check. Fed up with the player's shenanigans, I said the fort guard dusted the bottle for fingerprints and they matched Binbik, landing him in the stocks. Binbik's player was furious saying fingerprinting wouldn't exist since this was a medieval setting. I replied that fingerprinting was a new method of investigation that had recently been discovered and implemented at this fort. Was I being a sweaty DM for speeding up law enforcement technology to catch a murder hobo or did the end justify the means? I await your judgment P.S. Binbik broke out of the stocks later on but was soon killed after stealing from a new PC

To the undefinable Supreme Crit Justices and the guy who you clearly only keep around so we can make cheap jokes about a cheap man. I think his name is Jeb? I bring to you the case of Bart Simpson, the world's most hated NPC. I was DMing a campaign and the PCs were traveling to the Abyss to meet with a succubus warlord. During the meeting, I briefly introduced the warlord's bodyguards, which included a wispling (half gnome/half demon). I described him as “pacing back and forth behind the warlord, with his hands resting on hand axes” and “he has short and spiky hair. Kind of like Bart Simpson.” I got some light razzing for this description, but we quickly moved on. The meeting with the warlord went well and the PCs were offered to stay the night as guests. That evening, the bodyguard was sent to deliver a message to the PCs. As soon as their room door was opened, the party fighter attacked the wispling, followed immediately by the party sorcerer plane-shifting him to his god's home plane (where the demon would be hunted for sport). Despite having never spoken a word, my PCs had unanimously decided to kill the bodyguard. After the session I asked how they came to their decision. One player said, “I knew he was going to die when you described him pacing with his hands on his axes.” Two others said it was when I compared him to Bart Simpson. Regardless, they all claim that their actions were justified. The bodyguard was supposed to back stab the party during a climactic fight, so it worked out that they killed him before hand, but I ask you: Were my players wrong to kill my NPC before he technically did anything wrong, or are they just masters at sniffing out a traitorous Bart Simp-- I mean demon?

To the humble and powerful judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner. And Jik the bailiff. I present to you the Tone for Beans. I run a pathfinder 2e game set in a wild west setting where people use beans as the main form of currency. (Good Beans for Gold, Shriveled Beans as Silver, Crushed Beans as Copper) As such, I started coming up with the different worth of other shelf stable produce. As it was a wasteland desert, I wanted there to be a simple hunger mechanic to set the tone that you may have to resort to eating your money if supplies get short. I created some simple rules that worked with the currency math to give a feeling of worth to the currency, and the conditions that would occur if the party failed to find sustenance regularly. My players introduced the characters they would be playing, and my brother came out with an Automaton Chef. His character did not need to eat, and he had taken crafting with specific food recipes for survival. I loved that he was engaging with the setting, and while I could have denied the automaton part of his character as a bit of cheating, I didn't want to stifle his creativity and to see where he took it. Judges, the mechanic became so utterly pointless that by the end of the 8th session I just abandoned keeping track. It didn't seem right to adjust the mechanic, so I have just not been asking or bringing up the food situation. They even got some extra money from breaking down their Corn Ears in what I called "Stalks". We are now about to leave the settlement as the adventure leads them away, the characters have all had some rebuilding done as they have grown from level 3 to 10. As such, my brother's character has removed some of the chef aspects of his automaton in favor of pursuing gunsmithing, which is in line with his backstory. Would it be wrong of me to bring back my hunger mechanic, knowing they are no longer as prepared for it, or should I abandon it completely so they don't feel pressured to build to avoid it? We are well into our 30th session, and are really enjoying ourselves, and I would hate to spoil that. Also if you want to try to play the "stalk market" here's the game. Roll a d20. This is the condition of your corn. Roll that many d6's. Multiply it by 10. That's how many Kernels you get, and each of those is worth the same as a crushed bean!

May it please the most Lucious Justice Axford, Most Ornery Justice Murphy, and Most Rosiest Justice Caldwell and either the human version of lunch meat or the champion of breakfast Baliff Jake Hurwist. I bring a case of natural 20s, d4s, and dragon breath. My friend, who was DMing at the time, had us fighting a group of kobolds during a dragon centered campaign. In the midst of combat, a young adult or adult dragon appeared. Our Dwarf Druid (Moon Circle), during combat, asked his at the time spouse DM if he could intimidate the dragon by helicoptering his penis. She was not amused. The other players and myself were, admittedly so. She told him he needed to roll a d20 first. It was to be an intimidation roll. He got a natural 20, but he had a minus 2 to charisma. Our bard then gave him inspiration of a d10. He got a 10, bringing the total to 28. She started to narrator the dragon being intimidated by his bravery when he interrupted and insisted the following, quote: “my character deserves to know the size of his dong, it could be very intimidating and needed in the future.” She let out a long suffering sigh and told him to roll a d4. He then told her she should let him roll a d6, since penis size is in fact on average six inches. She told him, my campaign, my rules. She told him if he didn’t roll she would give him a penis size of 1 inch. He finally agreed and roll the d4. He got a 4. She then dryly role played the dragon being a little awe struck by his ridiculousness. However, she then rolled with disadvantage to roll the breathe weapon attack on him. It unfortunately hit him but also some of the Kobolds. He didn’t die and was saved by the fact he was in bear form. However, after combat, he interrupted and insisted that the intimidation should have done more. She told him, her campaign, her rules. She told him that she could have had the dragon kill him outright, natural twenty with inspiration be damned. He then pulled out the players handbook and the rest of the table spent the next 20 minutes in silence while he and the DM went at it. Also, during the 20 minute argument, he also brought up that she should have at least made him a d6 on penis size and give him advantage on it since ‘Dwarves are naturally big and girthy’. She told him there was nowhere in the players handbook nor the DM guide on penis size and that was fully at her discretion. The dragon was either a blue or white young adult one. It has been years since but, should the breathe weapon attack of an adult or young adult dragon have killed him? Thank you. And for the other Justices at the table, for an opinion, on a scale of one to ten, how pissed is the Honorable Murphy? P.S. I have been listening to NADDPod since February 2018 and I just want to say I’m so excited for you guys and I’m so happy to see you guys on Critical Role and more. Take care and I hope you guys continue to meet your goals!

To the honourable justices and jort, hardly a case but I beg for your input. My favourite fellow PC has started using Ai to write lines for his character and I don't know how to tell him to stop. A few months ago he started playing a new character (a bard) in our long running campaign and I learned that my friend was using chat gpt to take notes during session. Since then it's become more aparent that the flavour text of his spells, in game storytelling, and generally all creative decisions are being assisted by ai. He has even gone so far as to read off pre written Monologues for multiple minutes. I don't love this addition, as my friend is an excellent roleplayer and hadn't used Ai for the first few years we played together. But he claims this all helps him write easier and develop ideas. I don't want to tell someone else how to play their character. But I fucking hate Ai.

To the esteemed crit justices and the weeping babe-lif Jakey. I present the case of The Disengaging Mount Case Study. My party and I were fighting a fiendish goat giant in the shadow realm. My paladin Belle, mounting Pepper the horse by way of the Find Steed spell, was probably one hit away from going down when I decided that we would flee using Pepper’s action to disengage. I had already used my action to attack. My GM protested, claiming that my character was not taking the disengage action themself. This sent the whole table into an arduous (and very fun) path down how these mechanics work. After evidence in my favor was submitted my GM agreed that it was buttoned up, but still considered disallowing it based on how over powered it seemed in the moment. He ultimately ruled in our favor and we whomped the goat fiend, but judges, WWJD (what would justices do) in this situation? We humbly await your mounted justice. P.S. My GM was sentenced to earn his Animal Husbandry degree from Juliard at the 2023 Chicago Live show after not demonstrating a cow orgasm noise. So he already has that degree, FYI.

To the honorable supreme crit justices and the bailiff (I think his name is Jim...), I was in a D&D group with six work friends that ended horribly, twice. It began in our first campaign, Tales from the Yawning Portal. At first, it was the best campaign. Everyone bonded and had a really great time. Fast forward a year into the campaign, we survived a sunken temple adventure just to be ambushed by lizardfolk which ended in a half TPK, with three characters dying and three escaping. My alchemist, our rogue, and paladin of Selune escaped back to town and our characters and players were devastated. We LOVED the characters that died. At our next session, our original quest giver told us we had failed and would need to work with a new team to earn back the losses. The DM/quest giver then introduces our three new companions who are now IN CHARGE OF US: a drow sorceress, an awakened mind sorcerer, and a cleric of Shar. The drow player goes full matriarch and immediately threatens our characters if we fail again that she will personally kill us and if we displease her, she will cut off our fingers. The DM allowed the awakened mind sorcerer to read our minds non-stop, and the cleric immediately confiscated our magic items and weapons, saying we couldn't be trusted. The next week at work, the OG trio are actively planning on how to attack or escape these three jerks. I mention to the DM out of game that there may be some PvP coming and he laughs and says, "go for it!". Next session, the new party ventures to a nearby dungeon and in the first room, we are attacked by a beholder. We original three hang back and as soon as combat starts, we bail and leave the three to fight alone. My character left a health potion on the ground and Messaged once we were out that we were never going to be a team and best of luck. The DM was stunned, the other three were stunned and the campaign completely ended that night. Were the original surviving characters justified in leaving the new antagonistic characters to die? Should the dm have stepped in to reign either side in?

This is not a case, but I humbly request the illustrious East Coast Bailiff Hurwitz to consider plugging a fundraiser for Virginia legal aid. I live in NC and love your sister's music, and am a long time NADDpod fan. The link is as follows and is a TTRPG charity bundle for legal aid: https://bsky.app/profile/mixuppixels.bsky.social/post/3m2he3tzpbc2p

May it please your excellencies supreme critic justices, and may it deeply displease your excremency, bailiff Jank, I present to you the case of tiny servant head. I play with a long running group where we all take turns dming campaigns. several campaigns ago a party member was killed by a vorpal sword, full decapitation, all rolls were in the open, no funny business. We did everything we could, but there was nothing we could do. He was dead. I was playing a lawful evil Goliath cleric, I asked if I could cast Tiny Servant on his head so we could roleplay a final goodbye. The DM said yes. Instead of a touching farewell, the head sprouted little arms out of his ears, legs out of the neck hole and new eyes above the old unblinking ones, and chirped, “Hi guys! Why’s everyone so sad? Ew! Want me to clean this body up? I’m just here to help!” Everyone laughed, and the dm said since I was an evil character, I wouldn’t want a heartfelt goodbye and this more suits my alignment. The other player did not laugh and has never stopped not laughing. Since then the other player has never forgiven me. He says it’s my fault for playing an evil character. Ever since, every NPC and PC he controls treats my characters like dirt. I’m asking the Court to rule that he either accept my apology or stop making all his barkeeps, guards, and quest givers act like I personally killed their dog. Or tell me how I can make up for what my character did to his so long ago.

To the honorable justices and that other man I present the case of the cheating dm Our dm is entirely unwilling to lose battles and this came to a head last Thursday. Our party has a fluctuating cast of characters as we are students and midterms are a thing. This fine evening our party consisted of 4 people a cleric, a Druid, a monk, and a bard all 6th level. We were given a choice at the beginning of the session of if we wanted to continue with what was originally planned for our full 6 person party or have a beach episode type event. As none of us currently have any clue what the plot is 9 sessions in, we selected to continue as planned with the request that we had a safe word if things got to much with only 4 of us. This was the wrong choice. We ended up fighting a coven of 10 sorcerers ranging from level 6 to 19. My character being a bit of a nightmare creature (southern gothic undead college of spirits bard) managed to intimidate 3 in to running and our cleric commanded 2 to run. But we were still fighting 5 magic casters all higher level than us. Throughout the battle the dm was consistently rolling 3 d20s on my spell saves and ignoring the effects of spells. Then they decided to use draconic transformation to transform one of the witches into an adult blue dragon. So despite being a really good party and managing to get the whole coven down to 1 person at half health we still suffered a TPK. But don’t worry the DMs dragon that we saved previously swooped in to save us. We are all very frustrated and frankly considering a mutiny as this has become a pattern ( also they invited their 30 year brother to my apartment without asking me) anyway we look forward to your advice on how to proceed and if a mutiny is in order.

Greetings to the most fair, honest, and justices and … wait, don’t tell me… is it… Jonk? I’m going with Jonk. I bring you the case of the Dimension don’t. I play a level 6 College of Eloquence Bard, named Derik Dohard, in a cyberpunk world where technology is very prominent and every person has a smartphone. In one of our party's recent missions, we were following a GPS tracker to reach an abandoned hideout of a detective who knew info about our current mission. The GPS could only tell us the general direction to go and not specific instructions because this part of the city was abandoned and basically run by unhoused drug addicts. While exploring and following the GPS, an NPC informed us that multiple scary monsters lay ahead. So the artificer in our party cast invisibility on herself to sneak ahead and scope out the area. Lo in behold, our party accidentally discovered the fastest route to the hideout, and our artificer only had to sneak past 2 very scary mutated monsters. But justices, this is where all hell broke loose. Once there, I asked my DM if our artificer could send us a picture of the location she was at, and I could dimension door with the barbarian to the artificer. But justices, he ruled that I couldn’t. He claimed that this would not work because you cannot dimension door to an insanely realistic painting, which is similar to a photograph. I tried to argue that this is a cyberpunk world with high tech everywhere, and that on multiple occasions we have Google people and locations to get information, so a picture should be good enough to dimension door to. After around 20 minutes of this argument, I decided to pull up the exact wording of the spell and noticed that I could alternatively just say the amount of distance I would like to go and the direction, but he still ruled that I couldn’t. We then bickered for another 20ish minutes, until I decided to just accept his ruling and not use the spell. The session was fine after that. We explored the rest of the alleyways together, found a ton of fun loot, fought some very scary monsters, and even met a beloved NPC who was lost in there. So, justices, I humbly ask, was I wronged? Should my spell have worked? Or should I have just accepted his ruling the first time and trusted that there was a reason he wouldn’t let the spell work? I patiently await your ruling. Also ps. My party agreed that the spell should have worked, but they were slightly less engaged during the actual argument I had with my dm.

I realize I wrote mine stupid so it def wont be picked xD

The Case of the Barefoot Shitter Insurgency Good day to the honorable justices and to the consistently disappointing bailiff Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz. I lay this case at your judicial feet in hopes that it pleasures you: Years ago I was in college and began a campaign with people on my dorm floor. For legal reasons this problem DM will be called Jake. Jake had many flaws; he was petty, had an inflated ego, and an inability to accept responsibility for his actions. However unlike Jill the other PCs and I couldn’t just walk away, we were too excited to play and overlooked these red flags. In the first session Jake dropped NPC voices mere sentences after introduction and yelled at us PCs for our confusion. Jake only invoked the rules when it fit his “vision” for the campaign, even changing DCs after rolls. He also gave a magical bag of unlimited fantasy cocaine to the party and within 20 minutes took it back for table jokes about Breaking Bad; insisting this campaign be “just like Fantasy High”. There was significant tension at the table which led Jake, the small man he is, to skip PCs turns intentionally as well as target and kill the only first time player, who was my girlfriend at the time. I, being only slightly miffed, was content to let the weaker players suffer under Jake’s despotic rule. For I was the star of the party - living out my fantasies of delivering final blows and fornicating with maidens and were-bears alike. However two days later, I was brushing my teeth and Jake walked into the communal dorm bathroom stall BAREFOOT. For several minutes Jake loudly farted, grunted and shitted, then exited the stall and left WITHOUT washing his hands. I had just committed to a long term campaign with this animal, this terrorist. I wouldn’t let this stand, so I began my plot. In the first week I poisoned others against Jake, spreading vicious rumors to anyone who would listen. I highlighted Jake’s flaws and insecurities to his face under the guise of a friend; he was now isolated and broken. I orchestrated fights between him and his roommate and got the school involved and facilitated his move to a different dorm. In the second week I had the police handle him; I cannot go into further detail. I was successful, having stopped the terrorist threat and even became the new DM replacing Jake, the Tucker if you must. My PCs and I went on many unforgettable adventures and continue to this day. The joy we share is the real magic if you ask me. My euphoria was sweeter knowing that disgusting thug Jake was behind bars and excluded. Life was good. However over the years I have reflected and wondered: did I go too far? Justices I lay myself at the mercy of the court and I will gleefully accept or enforce any punishment you dole out. So am I completely in the right or was the coup undue?

To the honorable Crit Justices, the Most Exalted Wife Worm, and that bailiff jorn(?) I present the case of the rage quitting DM. I was a forever DM until one of my friends said they wanted to run a campaign where I could finally play a PC! I created a Cryptid hunting YouTuber named Beauty Montgomery who was really two kids in a trench coat Beau and Ty. I fell in love with my little bard. Our DM had consistently tried to trick our party and not tell us the goal of our campaign so it was hard to find out what we had to do each session. During the last session we played, we were going through a labyrinth and we were split up. I had built my bard with high perception since he was always hiding his identity as two kids. The party made it a point to say we were creating a map and using message to communicate each turn. When we mentioned retracting our steps to meet up- our DM asked how we got back. I repeated the turns we took from our map and was told that without anyone knowing the path had been changing with mechanical cogs and we were all lost. I asked why would my character with an 18 passive perception had not notice the loud described sounds of the maze changing. I even had asked to do perception checks as we were going through the maze and got no information except there’s a right and a left hallway. This line of questions ended with our DM yelling, rage quitting the zoom, and then sending a passive aggressive text to not question them when they tell us information. When I texted later explaining I didn’t mean to cause this I just felt like I was being set up to fail not because the dice but because information was being withheld, I was told they wanted to surprise us and they couldn’t have handled it any better. Ever since then-they canceled the campaign and my poor Beauty Montgomery has not been able to be played in almost a year. Was I in the wrong for asking a question and being too much of a rules lawyer ending the whole campaign for everyone?

To the unfailing justices and the AI that reads the cases, may I present to you the case of the rejected death. Judges, I have DMed this campaign for my 3 writer friends for 2 years already. Sometimes, I would introduce new systems for special events in the campaign like the Kids on Brooms system for a floating island containing a god forge. Last month, I introduced the Good Society rpg in honor of Justice Emily. One of my players always wants to change something about their character. First, they were a cleric that turned into a warlock that multi-classed into paladin. For 2 years, I've created storylines and the world based on their characters, so everything is connected to them. Now, my warlock-paladin has been makong riskier decisions in our good society rpg arc. After the session, they messaged me that they want their character to die to become a rogue. They also shared that they haven't enjoyed the game of polite society. Justices, I told them they can't die randomly because their character is important to the plot. They told me that I was too controlling and needed to let go. Justices, this is the first time I said no to this player. This interaction led me to think of going on hiatus. What should I do? 😭

To the despotic and tyrannical judge Murphy, I present the case of the doomed rogue. May it please the court of course. Several years ago, back in the mid 2010's, my friends and I were beginning a new campaign. The previous was great, but it should be noted another friend of mine, let's call him Devin, played a rogue. Not an incredibly strong class, but he was able to take down most of our dms monsters with little effort. Now, entering into this new campaign, I thought I would try a new class, that being rogue. Things were going well, and all of us were sharing a splendid first session inside a tavern. It was only as we were leaving did trouble arise. As my first time playing a rogue, I wanted to pickpocket the richest person in the tavern. I told the rest of the party I would be out in but a moment. After a short time of looking I found my target. I rolled sleight of hand and it was a 9. What our dm proceeded to describe was a combat where the entire tavern attacked my character. I was quickly beaten unconscious. I asked if I could play dead, but my dm described that they would not stop until my rogue was dead. I rolled a nat 20 on my next turn and used it to yell for my new allies to help. But they didn't roll high enough perception to hear my cries. I went down again, then on the following turn rolled ANOTHER natural 20 to get up. I yelled once more to the same result. What followed was a beatdown that killed my rogue. The DM then described the tavern hiding my body and continuing as usual. I asked why I couldn't escape and he simply said "no more rogues". Was I being unreasonable, or did my rogue deserve another chance? I leave the ball in your court.

Oh dearest, beautiful judges who are wonderful, lovely people. And also that guy. I present to you the case of the Unified Bar Mitzvah Timeline. I run a small campaign with some childhood friends. We have played three sessions so far, not counting the tutorial session I set up a while back so everyone could get a feel for D&D before character creation. I set the tutorial session at my friend's Bar Mitzvah (with his permission), and let my friends play themselves as 13 year-old's. I then had Asmodeus invade the Bar Mitzvah and steal the souls of all the other attendees (including myself) so that a series of challenges, interactions, and fights would ensue as an effective tutorial. I forgot to resolve the soul stealing part at the end of the night. At the next session, as a thank you to my players for their participation in the tutorial, I awarded each player a divine blessing to start the actual campaign. Really this was just a way to give my players a bit of gold and a player-specific magic item, but I specifically had each divine blessing include a note thanking the player for their help, "with the devil business." I didn't realize the implications of this until later, but I need your guidance. Did I just make my friend's Bar Mitzvah canon? Did I just forsake my own 13-year old soul? I am trying to figure out the way to best reintroduce this plot point later, because I really worry about my ability to navigate middle school beneath the crushing grip of Asmodeus. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.

To our scrumptious judges and aromatic bay leaf, I present to thee the case of The Warden DM. I was playing a one shot with my boyfriend’s cousins who are notoriously chaotic players. Before the game started, they were boasting about derailing their previous games to extreme degrees. The DM of this one shot was NOT a cousin, but another boyfriend, so this was only his third or so time meeting the extended family. The game began and immediately it was clear that things did not go as the DM planned. He had some minigames he wanted us to do before the story-hook was supposed to take, but our party scored a nat20 perception check on something and latched onto that instead. One of the cousins was hell-bent on following this thread, and her character killed 2 guards in the process. The DM, who had slowly been getting more and more flustered, angrily threw all of our characters in prison. We rolled loads of checks to try and find a way out but he kept saying nothing worked. I was playing a warlock and rolled a nat20 religion check to commune with my patron. Nothing came of it. Afterwards, we ended up roleplaying sitting in actual silence for 10 minutes while the DM sat with his arms crossed and occasionally said things like ‘well, this is what happens.’ I want to mention that prior to this, the players were having a fabulous time. Everyone was laughing and having a ball with the world the DM brought to us, it seemed he was the only who was miserable. Who was in the wrong? Was it the chaotic cousins who didn’t want to honour the one shot the DM had prepared? Or was it the DM who made us actually roleplay being in the naughty corner?

To the Supreme Crit Justices, may their rants and wants remain, and Baliff Jam, may he continue to be. Judges what do you do when a DM looses interest halfway through the first arc of (hopefully) a long campaign? I present The case A Crew, some Stew, and DM burnout. My party (DEFENDANTS) is a lvl 6 ragtag bunch traveling the dusty lands of Eberron in functionally a food truck. Our DM agreed to this for one of the new players ( I know) and They proceeded to intermittently forget the hook. As the sessions went on I noticed my dear friend putting in A LOT of work to make a engaging Food Service mini game. This often put other plot lines on the back burner as he often vented after session about getting them to engage others the world. After multiple sessions of me saying I'll try to wrangle these kids he often would either dismiss my interactions as overstepping, or just cut away back to them messing around in or around our food truck. Judges I ask, should we the party have course corrected to align with the setting or was our DM unsure where to put the rails at? I await your ruling P.S. we did end up finishing the arc and having a Wrestlemania type finale against a lich but it took a lot of and I mean weeks worth of reinventing the wheel

To the disingenuous justices, and the effervescent bailiff, I present to you The Case of the Fudged Resume. I ran a 6-month campaign with a table of five newish players (for 3 of them it was their very first exposure to DND). I had assembled the table, and we ran a homebrew time travel campaign. The players had an absolute blast, we had epic moments, funny ones, hard fights and easy ones. Memorable NPCs, adopted fey wild dogs of questionable moral alignment, the whole works. We met every week at the comic shop, and by the end our table had grown from multiple people who sat in to watch and ended up joining us. Now it’s time for a new campaign, and I have two tables and a waitlist and I am having a blast running them. Here’s the thing: I never specifically SAID that I had a lot of DM experience. I certainly intimated it and just never corrected anyone who mentioned my “experience”. I’ve played for about 3 years, and I did DM like 3 one-shots beforehand, but I was not the experienced DM that I sold myself as. I throw myself on the mercy of the courtesans, should I now confess to my players that I was also learning a lot as we played, or should I just stick to what is apparently working for everyone?

To the glorious judges & bailiff; the whimsical Caldwell Tanner, the perspicacious Brian Murphy, the ensorcelling Emily Axford, and the big Joke Hurwitz- I bring to you the case of the Boarhide Belt- I play a dwarf sorcerer (aka dwarferer) in an island-hopping campaign run by my two friends, Josh & Allen. They take turns DMing their islands, and the other plays a DMPC. On one of Josh's islands, I purchased a homebrew item made by Allen called the Boarhide Belt for 200gp. This belt gave me the Squat Nimbleness feat and a few other perks. We aren’t typically flush with money in this campaign. For 14 sessions across 293 days, all was well and I utilized the belt on several occasions (ex. squeezing through caves to reach an underwater city or keeping up while escaping an exploding factory). We made it to the next shopping opportunity, still on Josh’s island, when Allen said, "Oh I forgot something". He asked if I had attuned to the belt. I didn’t think I had to since it wasn't in the item description. He then said, "Let's just retcon that you haven't actually attuned to it yet," even though I would have in order to use it when I got it. I then attuned, put on the belt, and promptly transformed into a greased pig. Hoping to have some fun with the situation, I said I wanted to bust out of the tavern room we were in and cause a ruckus. I was asked to make an intelligence save, which I failed because my intelligence was now 2. I was told I was frightened, couldn't move, and thought that "everyone wants my bacon”. It was this point that our party wizard rescued me by casting dispel magic, temporarily ending the polymorph effect. Allen then tells me I got the first of the dud items. After the session, I expressed some frustration that I essentially lost an item that I was enjoying. I asked if at some point in the campaign I could have it fixed to work as it did before, to which both DMs said, "Yeah that sounds like a cool story beat". Justices, we have been on indefinite hiatus and may never resume. So I ask the court, what is the statute of limitations for instituting a retcon? How long in time or campaign progress is fair to wait for the fix to consider reparations complete? What if that never happens? Thank you, and may Dice Christ favor you as they do not for me- Magnar

To the Honorable Justices and the Bailiff with good action hero taste, I come with a case of silly character naming. A few years ago, I played in a campaign set in an alternate history U.S.A where magic was introduced to the world during the post-Civil War Reconstruction. It was a fun campaign overall, but one player always felt a little out of place. He came with a Goblin Assassin Rogue named Jeckson Blurn, who he claimed "was based heavily on Jason Bourne". However, his character wound up being purely comic relief, doing nothing that one would consider Bourne Behavior whatsoever. Overall the campaign went well and while Jeckson had a habit of cracking jokes during serious moments and still didn't know how to add his attack bonus by the end of the campaign, he was never a problem player. However, I believe if you are going to go for the reference character then you should fully commit to the bit. Should Jeckson have been more like his inspiration, or was he right to deviate from the iconic action hero?

I come forward so that the truly devout followers of Dice Christ may absolve me of my greatest shames. My crimes are thus: 1.) I never unbutton my top button when I am listening to the Short Rest, even though I am wearing a button up shirt when listening to the podcast. I know, it is a most grievous act, but I pray that Dice Christ may forgive me. 2.) Years ago I lied to a player about how much damage he took. We were playing Lost Mines of Phandelver and the group was facing off against a bugbear. Said bugbear landed a critical hit on the level one paladin and I rolled to see how much damage he would take. 26 damage, enough to fully kill the paladin outright. So I lied and said that the bugbear rolled really low, leaving him at just 3 hp. I do not regret fudging the damage, for it was this paladin’s first time playing D&D and I didn’t want to kill his character after playing for about an hour. But I fear that ever since, I have unable to get a campaign off the ground in any ttrpg I try. They usually stop after a session or two. Please, holy followers of Dice Christ, I pray that I may be allowed the chance to play in a campaign again.

To the Wife Worm and Wife Guys of the Supreme Crit, and whatever Jill legally has to refer to Jake as, I present the Neglectful Husband. We were a group of lv 7s fighting a lich and his minions. the DMPC cleric had thrust her sword into the lich's chest to absorb his magic so we would take only half damage to lower the difficulty of the fight. Knowing the lich couldn't remove the sword, my bard cast heat metal on the sword. After 2 rounds of my bullshit, my DM ruled that I'd heated the sword enough to melt it, even though that's not how the spell works, and we would now take full damage. I was fine with it, and took it as a compliment for my spell usage. We won without any permanent deaths thanks to the cleric's revivify and her father, a Duke of Hell, dragging the boss to hell to completely skip the second phase of the boss fight (cool). My actual grievance is that on the way home, the cleric's husband, an ancient silver dragon and my DM's pathfinder character, arrived to guide us home. As we celebrated our victory, the dragon cornered my character demanding I buy his wife a replacement sword, as the sword I melted had been an anniversary present. As a lv 7 bard, I did not have the funds to buy a new legendary class sword. He said don't worry, I can work off the debt. Judges, I do not want to buy him a sword. if he wants his wife to have a sword to defend her, I recommend he be more present in her life. What say you? I humbly await the wisdom of her worm-li-ness and the compassion of the court.

I place myself at the mercy of Dice Christ (or perhaps in this case Card Christ) and their holy disciples, for I have sinned. I have recently in the last few months, at the behest of Emily, taken up Magic: The Gathering. During my friend's birthday recently, I played my first game of IRL Commander and in my opening hand was a land search card, which I played on my first or second turn. In my 100-card deck, I pulled a land and played it, and we moved on to the next player's turn as I reshuffled the deck; however, because the stack of cards is so large, I split it into multiple parts to shuffle, then put it all back together. At the end of shuffling, I looked down and had no hand of cards in front of me. I had indeed shuffled the hand into my library. Not wanting to embarrass myself and/or halt the game, I told no one and discreetly drew the number of cards I thought I had left in my hand. I've since kept this dark secret to myself and not told a soul, not even my wife, who was also learning and playing Commander for the first time. I await and accept whatever damning you see fit.

The Case of Mistaken DICEdentity To the honorable judges and middling bailiff, for a few sessions as DM, I used a "GoDice" - a physical bluetooth-capable d20 that is meant to send a digital roll to a virtual table top. As DM to a level 4 party, I was rolling to hit a player who was near going down. The physical die landed on a natural 20, but a poorly timed desk bump made the d20 send a missing roll of a 14 to the VTT (Virtual TableTop). The players made an uproar when I tried to correct to the crit. All of them erupted saying that the number they all saw together should be the number that counted... while i argued that the number that I state as DM holds more authority, as I am a thinking human being. Judges, am I right that a DM's word holds more authority than a number thrown by a technical error? PS - I now only use that bluetooth d20 when i am playing as a player.

To the Honorable Justices and the worm bailiff, Lowly - I present the case of the Marvel Menace. In the early days of our playgroup one of us wanted to try DMing for the first time with just me running two PCs. The practice session was fun and I agreed to another. What I didn’t know was that the DM invited a second player to the next session. I was nervous because my two characters were parodies of Marvel characters - funny for a one shot but far from what I would typically play in a full campaign. Of course, the new player comes in with Thor and Black Widow and a full campaign ensues. From there things only got worse as the second player created exclusively Marvel characters for all subsequent campaigns, one shots, and mini arcs in our larger play group. These PCs have not been well received at the table as we tend to play typical medieval high-fantasy adventures. Judges, I ask you - who must bear the blame for this superhero epidemic that has been going on six years now? Is it the second player for forcing his superhero fantasy into our forgotten realms, is it the new but overly permissive DM that enabled us, or must I make my way to a Dice Christ confessional and beg forgiveness for this superhero inception? Perhaps everyone is to blame and this case has no heroes after all. I leave the ruling in your capable hands.

I come before the wise, honourable, and distractingly gorgeous disciples of Dice Christ (Murphy, Axford, and Tanner) in search of penance, for I have sinned grievously. For the sake of plausible deniability, I will keep the specifics vague, but in a mini boss fight a few months ago, the battle was going decidedly badly, due in no small part to me critting like I've never crit before with the villain and the party's powerful NPC ally rolling like an absolute wiener and going down super quickly. The session ended with one PC down and out for the fight, with the others badly bloodied, and the villains in pretty good shape. I spent the following week freaking out about how to not completely fuck my players over, then remembered some plot threads that I could pull on from earlier in the campaign; essentially, the BBEG wants the party, and this mini boss could have gotten wind of that. With that in mind, I started to make contingency plans about what to do in the event of a TPK, and actually started to kind of like the option, as it tied the current plot to the overarching plot, which is something that I have struggled to do with five chaos gremlin players Cut to the next session, and the fight resumed in a knock-down drag-out battle that saw two more PCs get incapacitated and one PC flat-out die. However, our last PC standing went into a frenzy and had the mini boss's back to the wall. Here, Your Graces, is where I fell from the blessed light of Dice Christ. By all rights, the last PC standing got the finishing blow on the mini boss, but in a moment of passion, I fudged her HP, and so the remaining PC was forced to run away with the aid of the dead PC's familiar. The other PCs were captured by the mini boss and sent off to the BBEG In the end, it led to a mini arc of the campaign where the free PC and familiar staged a prison break and the party narrowly escaped the BBEG's fortress, during which I learned how to give the players more control over the story without that translating into mountains of prep on my end, but I cannot forgive myself for taking away that narrow victory from the party and capturing them when they should have been free. PS: The campaign is still going well, and we recently had a dynamic, Murph-inspired encounter featuring shark-riding pirates with meat hooks pulling PCs off the deck of their new ship and into the water, and everybody seemed to have a fun time. I have not railroaded since the mini boss fight and do not intend to again, leaving the fates of the party up to their schemes and the rolls of Dice Christ <3

To the judges of my dreams and the baliff of my nightmares, I bring you the case of the death by adult toy. This was early in my dnd years, and my best friend wanted to try DMing for us. He is an amazing world builder and a very creative thinker, so we were excited to play. I was playing a teifling bard named Likalah, a renowned flirt and stereotypical bard to boot. It was also canon that within my trenchcoat, the right side held my daggers and extra spell components, while the left flap was full of *adult toys* (think: hustler Hollywood but in a trenchcoat) Fast forward to session 1-2, and our party has just finished killing an orge. To celebrate our win, I wanted to cast Heat Metal to make a mold of the orge's shlong. The DM then made me roll for it, and even upon my success I took burn damage-actually enough to take me down to 0HP. My DM seemed proud of the shut down of my tom foolery, however upon my first death save, I rolled a nat 20 and bounced up with 1HP! The DM was so mad at this, he got up and walked away from the table, ending the session. Judges- was I wrong for trying to add a shlong to my canonically correct collection, or was the DM being a crotch blocker? I humbly await your ruling. (Ps- we continued the campaign for a while, and it naturally faded out due to other reasons, however the DM and I are still best friends to this day and razz each other about it. )

Esteemed justices and bailiff Jack, I bring you the case of the entomological mixup. One of my players is the ant queen - a swarm keeper ranger, playing as a homebrewed ant-person race. The party is currently investigating the disappearance of the kingdom's (human) princess who went missing on the day of her coronation. They interviewed several of her potential suitors, who, upon finding out that our ranger is the ant queen, all became very enamored with her in the absence of their own missing royal. She successfully seduced two of them, and while I did refuse to narrate their threesome, I did roll to see how well they each performed. One of the suitors rolled a 7, and our any queen decided that this meant she should kill and devour him while he slept. (Like a mantis, NOT like an ant!) I gave her the "are you sure?" but she was determined. I made her make several (admittedly bogus) rolls that she all passed. I had the other, better performing suitor freak out and run to try to get the rest of the party to intervene, but they all decided to flee the inn upon hearing the news. Justices, I have no idea where to go from here. My party is split, my ranger is on the hook for a murder that has nothing to do with the current mission, and no one else on the team has any reason to try to help her. Everyone else wants to keep looking for the princess. We're all very good friends and this is not a symptom of any weird real life social dynamics in the group. We're just a bunch of women in our 30s who needed an excuse to get together in person once a month or so. Would I be punished if I started the next session narrating that the ant queen wakes up next to two very alive men, just having dreamt of killing one of them?

To the dishonorable judges and scoundrel bailiff. This is the case for the missing brother shutdown. I'm going to try and keep it short. The very first time I played DND was in 2018. Met my bestest friend if all time there. However the group itself was another problem. When I joined I made a very basic premise. I was a human bard, my brother was missing. That was it. So I'd ask ask him "can I ask an NPC 'Have you seen a man that looks like me". He didn't do voices or even had NPCs. So he'd just respond 'No one saw anything.' It was kinda boring plot wise. No one was really doing anything character motivated except me and my then soon to be bestie. We tried to RP but they'd stare at us like we were wasting time. I thought maybe I was just doing DND wrong. In fact they even winced and told me to be less loud when I excitedly got a nat 20. But then one session I asked if I could look for my brother one last time, he sighed and said "Yeah so she goes into the back takes out a scrying orb and says your brother is dead." And then went back to the others. So judges. I know clearly he's probably wrong, but was I doing something wrong too? It scared me off from playing dnd all together. Was I being too pushy with my one background element or being too boring or trying to not match the groups vibe? I was 20 and a woman when I was playing btw,. Everyone else was older and only dudes and more experienced. So maybe I was just immature or they just thought I was trying to seem cool and nerdy???? Idk. Sorry it was long. PS ty emily for making me realize that being a woman who isn't afraid to be loud and excited isn't a flaw but a feature.

Hello Your Honorable Dungeon Justices Murph, Emily, and Caldwell: Beacons of Chaos, Comedy, and Courtroom Class. ... .... Bailiff. This isn’t my crime, it’s my friend-with-benefits Ty’s. (He’s given full consent for me to share this.) May I present: The Case of the Long-Game Rectal Revenge Ty plays a Human Warlock named Marquis Loneflare who joined his party mid-campaign. That fateful day, Marquis was teleporting from Baldur’s Gate back to the College of Waterdeep. Simple jump. Textbook spell. Until; something went wrong. He got shunted off course. Spat out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere south of the Spine of the World. Freezing wilderness. No civilization. Just snow, pain, and regret. He barely remembers collapsing before everything went dark. When he next wakes, he’s surrounded by an adventuring party. They tell him he’s safe. He’s alive. He’s been revived. And sure, they’re giggling like schoolchildren, but hey, he's made new friends, right? Marquis travels with them for a while, biding his time, looking for a way home. Eventually, they discover the ruins of an ancient floating city, long fallen from the sky. Local legend claims: if a mage wields a Staff of Power and touches it to the Lodestone at the city’s core, there’s a slim chance they’ll be sent back in time, before the fall. The moment he learned about that Lodestone, he rebuilt himself for speed, with potions, feats, spells. Everything fine-tuned for one perfect, dramatic dash to destiny. So when he finally got his hands on that Staff, he chugged some kind of a Cloud potion, soared high above the ruins, and drifted his floaty ass toward his fate, abandoning the party without so much as a “goodbye.” ...and instead, Dice Christ decided he gets yeeted straight to the Prison Plane. He has been there ever since. Now, when Ty first told me this, I was ready to call it open-and-shut: classic warlock hubris. But then he hit me with the twist. Back when they met him - unconscious, might I remind you - his party revived him by shoving a healing potion up his ass. So, Your Honors, I ask you: who’s really guilty here? Marquis, for chasing ultimate power and having secret plans for the entire campaign to betray his team? Or his party members who violated his dignity with an unsolicited suppository of salvation before even saying knowing Marquis's name? Thank you for your time, your wisdom, and your tireless dedication to justice, chaos, and the protection of buttholes everywhere.

To the right honourable justices and quite honourable bailiff. Put on those fancy white wigs as this question is from the UK. I have been DM for a family game for the last 4 years. My sister and brother-in-law are both players in this game but their relationship has recently come to an end. Judges, can I keep running my game that I've been DM-ing for so long, put so much effort into and am only about 5 sessions away from finishing without my sister and ex-brother-in-law? My other players are my wife, his brother and his brother's wife.

To our esteemed justices and Jakey wit the Cakey;) I am part of a campaign that's been going on for 2 years now my long time character spronx a dragonborn barbarian had been effectively killed. Because of what I think is an unfair ruling. We are playing tomb of analiation we met Queen Zalkoré. One of the players in my party left the room and cast fireball because he got tired of us talking which caused her to shift my DM said that I did not get to save since I was talking to her I was automatically turned to stone and killed. I get the other player is a jerk for casting fireball that's already a settled matter I want to know was ur right to kill my character which I have become so attached to with our even letting me frolic with dice Christ?

To those on the Right Hand of Dice Christ, I come to you to ask forgiveness, not for a deed I have done, but one I am yet to commit. I'm a first time DM with mostly other new players, and the party recently spent the afternoon at a carnival, spending most of their gold to play silly games with chances to win silly magical prizes. They succeeded with a 1/100 chance to win an awakened Teddy Bear. With a cheery demeanour and love of giving out sandwiches. I haven't seen my party fall in love with an NPC before but they instantly took to him, helping him win a baking contest and win a magical chef's hat. Oh Holy One's, I fear I will have to kill this bear one day. For I fear nothing will set my party on a determined path more than avenging their fallen fuzzy friend. I ask your forgiveness for the time I must deliver this heartbreaking blow, in service of a greater victory on the future.

To the esteemed justices and that other little guy that hasn't guested on 8-bit bookclub yet, I present to you the case of the missed NADDPOD reference. While listening to Hot Boy Summer and the Olaf special (feat references of Henry Cavill and Owen Wilson respectively) I have been working with both of these actors. Every day at work I fight the urge to tell them about the Henry Cavill bird or the Owen Wilson olaf adventure. So far I've resisted. Is this a crime against Dice Christ? A crime against God? I don't know if this is a question for the court or a question for a priest, but the line between church and state grows ever blurred. Thank you.

Hiya Judges and the perfectly gorgeous ballif! I come to you today, with a confession for dice christ, and a case. A combo wombo if you will esteemed Judges. I am the dm for a small online campaign around 2014 curse of strahd (thanks Caldwell 😊). And I to dice christ confess that Ive been fudging some dice rolls, especially when it comes to aspects like loot. I am trying to be a good host and make sure the loot can work with the party and they got a Rod to restore a warlock spell slot, but no warlock. I said this out loud absent mindedly and rerolled the dice and to my surprise, I angered our paladin. They said I should've just sent it their way anyways as "fair is fair and the roll is what rolled." I apologised and assumed they would've rather had something else. But it was one player who said this. The rest agreed with me and so I kept doing messing with the dice rolls. Frustratingly the angered paladin proceeded over three weeks to keep bringing it up arguing with me. Everytime he kept fishing, I said no, I will not argue. But this last time really did me in and I told him that he's not allowed to come back if he does this one more time and low and behold. He tried, so I kicked him from the call. The other players said I went too far and said if I would've let the paladin vent, he would've not continued. I dont know if he would or would not. My gut said no, and its been effecting my ability to host. I did say, that they are free to do a game without me, since it is my problem. But im honestly not going to play with the paladin. Am I being too stubborn or wrong Judges? I know I cheated dice christ and a player, but I did it to ensure the party have more fun. Be honest, I want the right sentence Judges, not the easy one. P.S. Murph rules.

To the Honorable Court, and whatever bumpkin holds the position of Bailiff I present the “Case of the Self-Resurrecting Artificer”! I play as “Bridon Lingenhall”, a level 12 gnome Battle Smith Artificer in a Storm Kings Thunder campaign. My party and I, including my Rottweiler Steel Defender “Boris” were face to face with waves of enemies. My DM rolled a critical hit and knocked me unconscious! On the first round I was incapacitated I failed a death saving throw, but Boris was able to attack and hit a nearby enemy. I then used the Artificer ability “Arcane Jolt” to heal myself for 2d6 hit points. My party and my DM thought it was a fun move, but I fear it makes going unconscious less impactful. As Boris is able to take any action while I’m unconscious and Arcane Jolt doesn’t require an Action or Bonus Action, did my Steel Defender help bring back my character or did I unfairly lessen the stakes for the table? Relevant Steel Defender Rules/Language: Per the Battle Smith subclass, “If you are incapacitated, the defender can take any action of its choice…”. Relevant Arcane Jolt Language: “When… your steel defender hits a target, you can channel magical energy through the strike to create one of the following effects: • Choose one creature or object you can see within 30 feet of the target… restoring 2d6 hit points to it.

Hello honorable justices. Jake… Im a DM at an in person table and a player at 2 different online tables . One with friends from college and one with online only friends. My problem is actually a pet peeve that 2 players one in each online campaign both do. These players, a cleric and druid respectively, have terrible wisdom scores. +1 at level 5 and +2 at level 14. As a player who also DMs it’s crazy that they made it past character creation with primary casting stats that low! And no they aren’t melee builds and they aren’t using a different stat for casting. The stat they use for all of their combat options are a +1 and a +2. Not wanting to backseat DM I don’t mention anything, but doing combats with their weak characters really pisses me off. Am I evil?

To the esteemed justices (and guest justice should there be one) as well as the cutie patootie bailiff, I present to you the case of the offscreened npcs. In our last arc, our party had been in a dreary city called Murkwell. While in this city there have been a couple cases where npcs have been killed without us having the chance to save them. A cute blacksmith and jeweler couple who offered to buy the armor of a holy knight i had slain ended up getting killed by other members of the knights even when i specifically made sure to ask if they had ways of making sure the armor wasn’t tracked to them. several workers of a brothel that was being held up got their heads sent to my party in boxes by a crazed fiend who wished to experiment on my party. the plot points while compelling, left me, frankly, bummed. These were npcs that i had been excited about meeting and to have them offscreened left a bad taste in my mouth. my dm took this to heart and said he would do better in the future, which i do appreciate, but i can’t help but wonder, am i right to be upset by these offscreened npcs, or am i being a bit of a crybaby about something that happens in dnd. in my mind, i wanted the opportunity to save those npcs but when they are killed offscreen i simply get sad. i ask you, am i as a player right to bring up to my dm that i don’t like it when npcs are killed offscreen, or is this pretty common in dnd? i leave my fate in your hands.

To the Herculean Justices and the bailiff who...well, bless his heart, you know? I present to you the case of anime dating simulator. So this just happened last week when my usual Pathfinder 2e group couldnt meet. I decided to go to my local games shop because they advertised weekly D&D sessions. There was no information on the sessions themselves so I decided to roll the dice (Ha) and just show up. When i got there, they said that only one table hadnt started yet and would start in 15 minutes. I asked if I could drop in and they said yes, I just needed to choose between martial and magic and then roll a d4, and that would be my character. I didn't know anybody and there wasn't much time to make a character so I thought why not? I probably wouldnt play with them again anyway. I said martial and rolled a 4. When we began playing, I was handed a character sheet with the name Naruto Uzumaki on it. I asked if this was correct and the DM said yes. It turned out that this would be a world in which a bunch of anime characters all acted as a party. In his defense, the DM had done a pretty good job of turning Naruto into a way of the shadow monk. The other members were Ichigo from Bleach, Chopper from One Piece, Zoro also from One Piece, and Saitama from One Punch Man. I thought the idea would be fine unique, and I was bored, so I decided not to walk away. However, this table of all guy players and one female DM went off the rails right away. Every time we met a female NPC, all of the other guys would spout lore, catchphrases, or action dialogue to try and impress the NPCs, sometimes even going as far as asking them out or asking their "sizes". It seemed like this was a new idea to the DM because she didn't seem like she expected this. I kept trying to bring the table back around but the other guys kept telling me "I was a failure of a Genin," that "I'd never succeed if this was my ninja way," or "to just BELIEVE IT." It was like watching a train wreck, I just couldnt leave, but the DM didn't choose to stop it even though she seemed uncomfortable the whole time. My question is: should I have stepped in and tried to change the narrative away from this dating Sim, or was it alright just watching these 4 dudes yell catchphrases at this woman?

To the bodaciously gregarious justices and Mr. Jonk. I present to you the case of the absent paladin, I've been a forever DM for many years now, and am currently DMing a campaign for a group of 7 for the past year, 4 returning players who I've DM'ed for before, and 3 who are new to DND. They are all friends in real life and we all get along extremely well. While I expected the new players to take some time to get into the roleplay aspect of DND most of them took to it extremely well, very quickly yes-anding each other's antics. All except for 1, the paladin. For all intents and purposes he might as well be an unvoiced summon. He does not speak unless spoken to, does not act unless asked to act (to include attacking, or healing) and generally just sits and listens to the campaign. I have tried to encourage him to roleplay and engage by making scenarios that directly engage him such as having members of his old order approach him to ask why he was kicked out of his order (his own backstory which he excited shared with me after creating), or asked the other players to help get him out of his shell by roleplaying at him and including him, to no avail. Instead, he says the minimum amount of words required to exit the interaction and returns to silence. In the case of the members of his previous order, he scoffed at them, called them dishonorable, and left. It's to the point now where I'm concerned he's not enjoying himself and is just pretending for our sake. After bringing this up with my wife she encouraged me to kick him out of the campaign and instead let her play her character in his place. I have discussed his participation in the campaign just to check on him and see how I could help him roleplay and he says he's really enjoying the campaign and thinks it's going just fine and offers no further information. I ask you, should I listen to the advice of my wife and remove him, in spite of her biased opinions, or should I grant the paladin more time to integrate himself into the campaign I prostrate myself humbly at the mercy of the court.

Hi Mr Jake

Snailiff Cake, (got'im) I humbly submit a case of Bachelorette Party gone sad. Recently I was a Bridesman at a wedding for a good friend. We, the bridal party, hired a local DM to run a one shot for the latter half of the night as everyone there loved ttrpgs, and are experienced players and DMs. The night came and we sat down at the table in a hotel conference room we had rented out with this paid DM to whom we each paid $30. The adventure was a typical start in a tavern which lead to a dungeon crawl. Admittedly we had all been drinking quite heavily, it was a Bachelorette party after all. About half way through the 3 hour session full of too flirty bridesmaids and an excess of penis jokes, it seemed that our shenanigans became too much for the paid DM who stood up, started crying, announced that the session was over due to us "ruining her prepared scenario", packed-up her things and left. It all felt quite sudden, there seemed to be no warnings or redirection attempts. However, we were deep in our cups so such things might have passed by without notice. It ended the night on a sad note and we all went to our respective sleeping arrangements. Later, in a more sober state of mind some of other maids complained about services not rendered and talked about demanding a refund. Honorable Justices of the Court, would we be out of line to pursue a refund for services not rendered, or should we take responsibility for our drunken party, and in fact we were in the wrong? Thank you

For the extreme justices and the boastful bailif I seek your judgement for one of my players I've been dming for a group of 7 friends from school for about a year now and everything has been going great except for the fact that one of my players has consistently tried to insert himself into higher status than he is so the player let's call him Travis even just starting out in the same session as soon as they completed the main quest of the town said that he was leaving and that it's quote what his character would do and after making his character want to leave several more times still insists that he's the party leader and this has even transferred out of game where he had a disagreement with one of my other players and after the other player agreed to drop it and continue on he decided to make a big show of leaving and send a quote ultimatum that it's either him or the other player please enlighten me with your wisdom on what I should do

Dearest justices, and somebody remove that stinky man PLEASE. I come to you with a common case; a tale as old as time. This is an issue with scheduling. At the start of last summer I got really into D&D and ran a few games for my immediate family. During this time I learned that my uncle who lives across the waters (I am Irish and he is American) is a big fan of D&D since 3rd edition and has been paid to run games over COVID, so we try to get a game together. Organisation goes great, we had great characters, the party consisted of me, my brother, my uncle (the DM), and my uncle’s son, and we got Discord and Roll20 working. This was supposed to be biweekly, but your honours, we played about 4 (two hour) sessions over 6 months and this was not due to a lack of trying, but I still feel let down. I was always the one asking when we would play next, and there were some times that my brother and I would log onto the game, only for our family to text us 20 minutes late saying that they couldn’t make it due to dentist appointments, and once they didn’t join because they were all asleep (at 2:00 in the afternoon their time). Earlier this year I tried to run a 2 shot, but we didn’t get to play the second session after 7 weeks, at which point hope was lost. They are not bad people and I played a lovely game when I was in person with them over the summer but am I wrong to feel cheated or at least a little sad? I play D&D regularly with my own group of friends at home so my dreams of playing and running games is not lost, but judges I patiently await your judgement.

May it please the judges and do whatever to the bailiff. I have been DMing a campaign for the last 4 years. It has been my first and only campaign ever DMing or playing and I feel like I have learned a lot. However one problem I have noticed is that my players don’t call for checks often and I am worried it is because in the early days of the campaign I didn’t do a good job of holding information back until they went looking for it. I am trying to be better about it but I run into problems now of people not investigating things. A glaring example was in our most recent session where a player was exploring a library after a ghost led him to a book. I said that the ghost sang a song of distruction, and flew into the book. The book was described as being covered in eyes that were crying, and after opening the book the inside cover said “your name, your blood, your power” (campaign one style). Without rolling any checks to investigate the book or looking any further at other pages the player completed the ritual and I was panicking. I told him that his soul was trapped in hell and a demon was piloting his body and the party would need to rescue him. He said he doesn’t want to play anymore if that was the case and that I should have told him the book was cursed. I just wanted him to read through the names and see that the villain they were about to fight had signed his name in there and had more going on than met the eye. Am I wrong for not giving him the information up front, is there anything that I should have done differently with the book? May the court please have mercy on my soul.

To the beautiful, honorable Justices and our beloved baby Bailiff, I present the case of the AI DM. I've been playing in a homebrew campaign with a group of close friends, and after 6 months of playing we have reached the approximate mid-point of the campaign, a climactic battle with an avatar of the BBEG. One of our PCs made a very creative and wild move that threw our DM. Instead of ending the session, or stopping to break and plan out his next move, our DM said "Let me ask Chat GPT what we should do next". Turns out, our DM has been using Chat GPT to write the entire campaign - all of the plot points, characters and settings were generated by AI, and no ideas were created by our DM alone. As someone who works in a creative field, I admittedly have a bias against AI for many reasons and feel that its use cheapens the campaign we've been playing. However, I also understand that we're adults with busy lives, and AI has helped our DM save time and balance real life responsibilities with his DM duties. So justices, should AI be used as a DMing tool, or should campaigns be made using the power of creativity?

To the ominous and stoic Judges, and the stumbling-his-way-down-the-stairs Bailiff, I submit the case of the Nuked Wizard. This case does not directly involve me, but rather a friend of mine and an event in a campaign that I would end up joining later down the line. My friend, who was playing an elven blade singing Wizard named Neovolus (or “Neo” for short) in a war torn, apocalyptic campaign. Neo and his party were undergoing quest to recover documents stolen by the mafia. Eventually the party ended up in a warehouse filled with illegal weapons and explosives. They were met with little resistance, and got the papers no problem! Making it all the way back to their rendezvous point only to release the papers were fake! With a sticky note on the inside of it reading, “Got you!” It was at this point that the party also noticed an ally NPC was missing and somehow had been kidnapped by the mafia! Rushing BACK to the warehouse the party was met with dozens of mafia members. And after a fairly standard combat, the party managed to save the kidnapped NPC, and recover the stolen papers! All seemed well, right? With at least 5-6 mafia members left alive in combat, the party decided to flee with what they had instead of the risking the fight. It was Neo who was the last to exit the warehouse, and in an effort to give the party a “cool guys don’t look at explosions” moment; Neo cast Firebolt at a crate that looked like some sort of explosives, then PLANNED to misty step out of the building to join the rest of the party… Instead the DM declared that the unmarked explosives were in fact NUCLEAR WARHEADS. Neo was killed outright instantly, as were the remaining mafia guys. As for the rest of the party? A mere Dex save! To which most of them passed! And the ones that failed, didn’t even take enough damage to knock them unconscious… So judges, is the Wizard right to be mad at the DM for killing their character? Or should they not have blasted a random crate of unmarked bombs in a mafia warehouse? (I did end up joining this same campaign later on, to which I played 2 very odd sessions before the whole thing fizzled out.)

A humble confession. May it please the Honorable justices as well as Jape, who we wish never goes bald. I bring a confession though no sun has truly been committed yet. I have been a DM for a group for the past 6 years, we have told 2 very good campaigns each lasting aprox 2 1/2 years each. All is well. Though my confession is thus, we had to shift to online table top due to life happening, and it is difficult for me to adjust. We have multiple time zones to balance, as well as maybe being lucky to meet 1 time a month (if that). It weighs heavy on my heart. I love my group and I know statistically most parties would have fallen apart long ago. Dear justices am I good to let the group die out? Should I keep pushing through the motions of our new campaign? TLDR: I love my players but am growing weary of long breaks between sessions and not having the warm comfortable feeling of all being in person. May dice christ forgive my blasphemous thoughts and the dice devil have mercy on my soul.

Dearest Supreme Crit Justices and the Jubilant Bailiff Jake, When is it okay to abandon an otherwise “okay” campaign? Years ago, I joined a Curse of Strahd campaign with my wife, her sisters, and her brother in law. We were first time players, and it was fun at first. But after three years, my enthusiasm started to wane. We played around three six- to 8-hour sessions per year, and had just barely managed to get to Vallaki. In that time, I got my PhD, started working full-time, and really wanted to focus on my health since I neglected it in school. When the gang wanted to schedule another session, I texted the group and backed out of the campaign, saying I wanted to prioritize self-care until I found good work-life balance. The DM was bummed, but the others were livid. They said it was unfair for me to back out because their sister (the DM) invested so much in worldbuilding and inmy character’s storyline. Eventually, that campaign fizzled out, and a year later most of us began playing a new campaign with more friends and regularly scheduled sessions. Even though things are much better now and we’re playing together again, I still feel awful when I can’t make it to a session. Was I in the wrong for backing out of that last campaign? Should I have just thugged it out?

May it pleasure the court and tickle the bailiff's fancy until it wets itself... I present the case of the Bullseye Druid: I joined my lady friend's group, two Rogues and a Barbarian, so I rolled a Grass Druid built for stealth. The DM was running the same module with another group and thought it would be fun for both parties to race to retrieve a Macguffin for a town festival. There was a clearly stated rule that no one would die from PvP. Parties ran separate sessions through an under water grotto with potions to breathe. Our party used Pass Without Trace to avoid most combat. DM said both groups went the same speed, so we reach the treasure room from opposite sides at the same time. I ask at the start of our joint session if we can roll stealth since Pw/oT is still up. DM says no, roll initiative, I let it go because the session has about 10 players. The Macguffin is an amulet attached to a shark. Our party uses Psychic Whispers to plan an underwater grab and dash. While everyone is fighting the shark, our Soul Knife Rogue manages to get the amulet so I cast Invisibility on him. He hands off to our Arcane Trickster's Mage Hand, she double dashes. Other party thinks Soul Knife still has the amulet. Their Wizard, who is the DM's husband, table talks "Focus fire the Druid to break concentration" even though none of them have a way to communicate under water. I get focused down by six PCs ignoring the shark. Rogues escape, Barbarian stabilizes and scoops my body. We "win" but I'm salty as the sea. Should we have gotten a Stealth vs Perception role before combat? Should the DM have stopped the table talk to uphold the no PvP killing rule? I await your ruling with potion-baited breath!

Oh holy ones of Dice Christ, I must confess a shameful secret... For more years than I care to count I though that the "Role" in RPG referred to the dice, not the players' performance. Worse, part of me still clings to this belief. Can the Church forgive and absolve this RNJesus heretic?

To the wise and dutiful justices and that pretty boy you have stand in the corner to read your cases… I ask you if it’s okay to still be miffed about a one shot from about a year ago. It was a Halloween One Shot that I found online and thought would be fun (it wasn’t) so it was pretty hard to keep the players engaged. Plus it was on Discord. However one guy, a fellow DM, kept saying things like “oh so it’s railroading” and I was like “man it’s a one shot.” But as the night went on I would ask him things and he wouldn’t respond. We had talked about him a playing a man made of worms (starspawn) whose disguise self would wear off at a climactic moment … except I said the thing and he wasn’t there. The other players were confused and it really fell flat. I don’t even want to talk about how combat went… After the session he said “Yeah I wasn’t at my computer because I was so sick I was vomiting between turns so I missed a lot.” The thing that gets me is he still jokes about it like it was something funny. He’s my friend’s boyfriend and has repeatedly asked me to join his one shots, but I’m always too annoyed. Justices, is it time to bury this?

Esteemed Judges. Hake Jerwitz. I am currently playing a Goblin Wizard named Puck in Wild Beyond The Witchlight. One of the character creation parts of that module is your character has had something stolen by the Fey. Puck had her Luck stolen. Earning her the nickname "Bad Luck Puck". Unfortunately, I am rolling like a GOD in this campaign. Even worse I keep on rolling nat 20s on perception checks, which I have a -2 to all. Is there any way i can mitigate my amazing rolls for my canonically Extremely Unlucky Goblin Girl.

To the Honorable Justices and their bayleaf Jork, I bring a cold case before you in the hopes of resolving a 40-year long grudge. My brother and I both love D&Ds and regularly play together. We get along well, we play with a variety of friends, and take turns DMing. The problem, Justices, is that our mother resents Dungeons and Dragons. When my mom was in high school, she dated a boy who loved D&D. He played every day during lunch and as much as possible after school with his group of friends. She thought it was cute–she was a nerdy kid, too! Fast forward to prom night, 1985. Her boyfriend brings her, the night is magical, it’s perfect.. And then he drops the bomb: they need to leave early because he has a D&D game in the morning. The night is totally ruined. Every time we mention D&D, she looks just a little disappointed. I’m worried that my brother and I playing constantly is a reminder of a lame boyfriend who didn’t care about her feelings. I love my mom and I don’t want her to be sad that my brother and I play D&D. Judges, how do I make this right? How can I make her trust D&D again?

To the honorable justicies Emily, Murph, and Caldwell and honorable guy Jack Bailiff from, I wanna say Try Guys? I present the case of the iPad baby GM I was invited to a game consisting mainly of some coworker friends that was supposed to be a Mass Effect 5e adventure. This was my first time playing any ttrpg and I was excited. The first session was a bit awkward, there wasn't a cohesive storytelling vibe at the table, but I pressed on because with no experience I assumed (somewhat correctly) that a new group would naturally have to find a rhythm. The next week, I showed up for another lukewarm attempt at roleplay, only to see that to my shagrin the GM started drawing on his tablet while the players continued to attempt to awkwardly role play with each other. This should have been when I backed out, but I was willing to let it slide this time and I didn't feel like I was good enough friends with the guy to say something. Apparently nobody else mentioned it to him either, because when we met for our third session, he pulled out his Nintendo Switch in the middle of the session while describing The Citadel and started playing Animal Crossing instead of GMing with no prior warning. The group fizzled out after turning into a general board game night after that. I finally have a good game with a dedicated GM and close friends, but sometimes this awkward experience still haunts me. Was I wrong to not have piped up and asked him what his deal was for the sake of the other people at the table or was I right to sit back awkwardly and let this attempt at fun fade out slowly? I humbly await your judgement.

To the Justices Murphy, Tanner and Axford, and that other guy… what was his name again… Mike? I bring you the case of the possessed Santa and the murdering rouge I was running a Christmas themed adventure for my players that was set in a town during an unusual snow storm. The town elders were concerned that there was smoke coming from a long dormant volcano nearby. They hired the party to investigate whether or not the volcano was close to erupting. The party investigated and found there was an evil wizard who wore dark red robes with a long white beard (i’m sure you can make the connection) who had enslaved a group of Gnomes and forced them to make weapons inside the volcano. The wizard of the party asked to make a perception check on the evil wizard (lets call him San’Ta) and i described that he carried a long staff that had a dark black orb on top and seemed to be where his magic was coming from. The party fought through the Gnomes and got to San’Ta. And while he was giving a clique speech about world domination the rouge decided to sneak up behind him and stab him. He rolled a nat 20 on stealth so i allowed him to get a surprise attack which he missed. San’Ta was under the surprised condition so the rest of the party attacked. After 2 rounds of combat the wizard of the party decided to cast fireball on San’Ta. I described San’Ta looking on deaths door. So he said he would like to do non-lethal damage. After that the party’s druid decided to break the staff. And i described San’Tas robes lightening to a bright red and his face becoming “rosier”. The Gnomes that were still alive i described as coming out of a trance like state. The rouge asked to roll a insight check to see if Santa was still evil. He rolled a Nat 1. He decided to kill Santa. None of the other players objected so i allowed it. I then described the valcano beginning to erupt. Everyone had fun but the players expressed disappointment that i had made Santa evil. So i ask the court. Did i make Santa being cursed by the staff to do evil things not obvious enough? Or were my players just oblivious?

To the jiffy justices and bailiff Jerry A few years ago I was DMing my first campaign when a few players asked me to let another friend (let’s call him Denny) join, I figured what could be the harm. Denny had never played DND before so I offered him a session 0 before jumping in, to which he declined. He instead opted to join in on the middle of a battle session with little to nothing filled in on his virtual character sheet. When it was his turn, Denny’s character hid and Denny himself decided to watch TikTok’s on his phone with his mic unmuted on discord. Similar issues went on for multiple sessions but I finally lost my patience when he joined one session and proceeded to “green out” to the point that we were all listening to him snore on call for 30 minutes before the rest of us deciding to cancel session entirely. I wanted to talk to Denny about this behavior but was advised not to by my other players as Denny had recently gone through a rough breakup and unfortunately the group ended up fizzling out. I ultimately turn to your judgement Justices, am I wrong for wanting to talk to Denny about his behavior during something I worked hard on or should I have let him nurse his heartbreak at my (virtual) table?

To the artist formerly known as Jake and the Jean Jakettes, I bring you the case of the Flavorful Party and the Homebrew World. I DM for a group of 4 in a 5.5e campaign. The party consists of a one-armed ranger with a snake-like scarf companion, a tiefling fathomless warlock who uses a fishing rod, a college of dance bard(essentially a magic monk), and a tabaxi rogue who I allowed to use the stats of a small sized Tabaxi, similar to a Gnome. They did this to mimic being an “actual cat”, born to a family of Tabaxi and shunned for their differences. I thought this was rad as hell, so I said yes. I understand what I did, Brian, you don’t have to yell. I’m building the world around them and integrating their backstories into the lore. Such as; a Society for Inorganic Familiars for the Ranger, mechanics for the Warlock to fish and collect “cursed” fish that provide various effects, royal ties for the Bard with a dance-focused culture and history, and a Dragon BBEG called “The Collector” who desires to collect the cat as an unusual creature. My question is; What am I missing? I want to emulate the cinematic atmosphere of NADDPod to the best of my ability. I know that’s insane, but alas. So what’s up? Brian?

To the pinaccular curricular justices Murphy, Tanner, and Axford, upon which grounds there may be, and to the extracurricular baliff, upon which grounds there aren’t: The Case of the Act One Exit I was in a campaign where I plaid a Tabaxi Rogue named James (who I had named my real cat after) for nearly two full years every other week. Unfortunately, I got a job that demanded I move away, so I had to leave the campaign. It was of the utmost convenience and serendipity that the main story of the campaign was nearing it’s end and we were already going to have our final battle on the day of my last session before we even found out I was leaving. For context of this campaign, the DM had always been a bit of a bully to my rogue, with my strongest example being that normally, when people missed sessions he would just vaguely play the character to get it through the session, but when I had to miss a session, my character would disappear, doing “rogue shit” as the DM put it, which then had real in game ramifications based on me not being there (e.g., losing out on the 5000g bounty for completing a mission because I wasn’t there for the session they collected the reward, while another person who missed did get the reward because the DM just piloted that character.) The most egregious example of this was when I (level 13 rogue at this point) had to “sneak around to collect info from the enemies” during one of the sessions I missed, for which he made me roll five times with a DC of 20 and disadvantage. When I told him that I automatically passed barring a nat one because of my class feature, he changed the dc to 25 after I had rolled, which caused me to fail. He gave me the chance to pretend I hadn’t rolled it, but that felt like cheating to me so I accepted the punishment. He then locked my character in a force cage and made him have an emotional breakdown because a hot character had also been locked up and then I was screaming and crying so profusely that the guards caught me easily and locked me up without a fight. That was a 22 on stealth by the way. Regardless, end battle comes around, and the DM has each of us controlling our main character and one of his dmpcs we had met throughout the journey. Halfway through the fight, he super upcasts scatter on us from one of the npcs during someone else’s turn because that person killed the npc so he just did it then. He said that scatter was underutilized and then teleported the characters “all over the earth” and those characters were GONE FOR THE REST OF THE SESSION. Of course, you could guess, my rogue vanished in the blink of an eye. We continue the fight, and the enemy summons their ancient god of the some shit or another, and he procedes to do to us what the farmers in food inc did to those chickens. The DM also adds a mechanic where if you go down within a specific NINETY FOOT RADIUS area, you instantly die and are absorbed by the boss, only being able to be brought back by true resurrection, which we didn’t have. Everyone either died or ran away, leaving combat. I didn’t even get to play my character for the last three hours of the session. Finally, after everyone is dead excelt for our chatic evil cleric, he uses a random mystery scroll he bought in the city, my DM rolls the scroll table and he lands on Wish (I watched and it really landed on that.) my cleric uses it to cast true resurrection on vecna and the session ends. Everyone was reassured that the session actually didn’t suck and was actually really cool because it set up for act two of the story where they would be traveling through hell and other planes of existence, but I am not part of that. Do you believe that a scripted loss on my last ever session was reasonable? The boss still had ballpark of 700 hp and two primeval wild shapes left when we died btw. I thank the court for their endurance and decision regarding this story.

Dear Exalted Judges of the Court, My peace cleric has a strange relationship with god, and a stranger relationship with the paladin of the party, who acts like his father despite my character's protests. After revealing some upsetting backstory information to our Paladin and making him mad, I went on a walk to commune with my god, and everyone else was asked to leave the room. I thought I was about to get fun lore information, but instead I got kidnapped by our Artificer's parents. This would be bad enough, but I was then told one of them was disguising themself as my character, and I would have to play them, with the task of stealing a very powerful magic item from the Paladin I was just fighting with. Not a single person in the party noticed anything strange about my actions, and the paladin actively gave away any information my (fake) Cleric wouldn't have had. This has, understandably, resulted in some trust issues within the party, as to escape being kidnapped my Cleric had to reveal some important (possibly world ending) information to my Kidnappers. But in character, my Cleric is upset that nobody noticed it wasn't him, as the fake Cleric actively apologized for things he wasn't sorry for, and no one thought anything was wrong until he messaged the party. So I ask you this, what is more of a betrayal of trust: Revealing possibly world ending information to the parents of another Party member who would have permanently killed my character, or not realizing your fictional Dad is pretending to be your cleric to steal potentially world ending magic items?

To the silly goose judges and the super serious bailiff i present the case of the prissy boy and his goat milk. I joined an online campaign and session one our pcs met in a bar normal right? Well my pc orders goat milk and the others beer and the waitress gives me some attitude I was like oh maybe the dm wants me to interact with her so I did and asked why she was rude to me I just wanted goat milk and she said she said I was prissy and I was like OK ill talk to your manager. And then I talked to her manager and she got in trouble I thought funny bit. But then the waitress threatened to kill my pc and stalked him the whole night, then a town elder told me off for telling on her and the dm made me lose 1 honor. Please justices did my pc commit a terrible sin i await your judgements perched and scared.

To the most honorable judges and somehow even more honorable bailiff If it pleases the court I have a dnd apology to my DM I was playing a warforged monk who was given sentience but poorly programmed with "Grims Guide for Heroes 101 rules for adventuring" (a list of rules which another pc created during previous campaign). My programming could only hold 5 rules at a time so every long rest I rolled a d100 and the oldest rule would be overwritten by the new one. (Rule 101 about rules being guidelines so use common sense, have fun and dont die out there was never programmed). It led to some fun roleplay and I loved playing as him. We found out there was a town of other Warforged who had been programmed with the rules but not given sentience and were being controlled by an evil god type being known as Ai. The party made a plan to defeat Ai and give sentience to all the warforged of the town. The issue came due to a conversation I had with our paladin literally right before the big fight. He asked me if I was concerned another evil person might take advantage of the newly awakened Warforged since I had told them I didn't know how the world worked when I first came online. It was a real "oh shit I hadn't thought of that" moment for both me and my pc. I made the call right there in the middle of the session that after the fight I would stay in the town and help teach everyone about the world retiring this pc and rolling up a new one for the next session. We won the fight and I felt good about my choice until the DM revealed he had taken the time and effort to go through all 101 rules and add cool effects that would happen as a way of rewarding me for winning the fight. He did this for EVERY SINGLE RULE. eg rule 1) Trust no one, but be trustworthy now meant I would have gotten +4 to Insight checks, -4 to deception checks when that rule was one of the 5 programmed. Despite his hard work and the incredibly cool mechanics he had created I felt I couldn't in good conscience leave the other warforged and carry on adventuring with my party. So I stuck to my plan and retired M.I.R.G. I know my dm puts alot of work into creating a session each week for us so do sometimes feel guilty about wasting all the extra hard work and effort he put into making something he knew I would love. Since my brother and I both listen to y'all I figured this would be the best way to apologize. So if it pleases the court "ENBY being of sound mind and under no duress hereby sincerely apologizes to MATTHEW for wasting all his time and hard work. They promise to go back to playing M.I.R.G if you manage kill their new pc. They love you and want to thank you for introducing them to dnd in the first place. They think you're the best DM and brother of all time (and we here at NADDPOD agree)."

To the lovely Supreme Crit Justices and the tolerable Baliff Jake, I come before you today with a case of my own social faux pas. About two years ago, I got connected to my current dnd group through a friend-of-a-friend situtation. They were an established group just starting their second campaign when I joined. Your Honors (and Jake), it has been great. I've met a wonderful group of people, and we meet up in person to play every two to three weeks. I recently got engaged IRL and am looking forward to celebrating alongside these friends at my wedding. My problem is this. Your Honors (and Jake), I do not know their last names. I do not know if they are married or dating anyone or need a plus one. This is making it very challenging to address invitations. I can tell you the rogue's tragic backstory and the paladin's dubious motives, but cannot confidently tell you what their players do for work. After two years of friendship, how do I casually admit that I only have their contact info saved as "Henry DND" in my phone and gain this information? Thank you for your wisdom and guidance, sincerely, A stressed out cleric

DM v Lootmongers: May it please the court of high justices and remind the lowly bailiff of the heights he once stood upon before his precipitous descent into, at best, mediocrity. I DM'd a remote campaign during COVID lockdown for some of my closest friends and then-fiance (now wife, despite this story). Just before the final battle of the story arc, our wizard cast Leomund's Tiny Hut for a short rest. This bit me in the ass, as the players would literally duck into the hut mid-battle to avoid being targeted by the big bad. While the party put on a masterclass in cowardice, I had my DMPC, Nondrak, take to the shadows for sneak attack opportunities. The boss ultimately found Nondrak, making short work of him. When the players downed the big bad, they busied themselves with looting, and Nondrak had already failed a death save. Mid-looting, my fiance left for a restroom break and it wasn't until after she returned that the party remembered Nondrak. When asked, I told them that he had gone down in battle and died as they were looting. Uproar ensued, and my fiance argued that it was unfair that Nondrak died as we were clearly heading into a break. Nobody liked my argument that their looting before the break took much longer than two more rounds of combat. Was Nondrak's off-screen death unfair? Or was it negligence that did him in? I lay myself at the mercy of the court and am willing to distribute punishment as necessary. Unless it’s for me, in which case I request Jake receive any punishments in my stead.

To the notable justices of the supreme crit I present the case of the brittle backstory boss. One of my players' backstory revolved around avenging himself against his character's brother, who had killed their parents in the process of stealing a family heirloom to sell it to a crime boss to pay off debts. Eventually, he tracked down the crime boss and ambushed him, getting information on his brother's whereabouts before killing him. I spoke with the player to figure out an appropriate stat block for his brother. The player said they think the brother was never much of a fighter, the familicide being his first act of violence, followed immediately by going into hiding using the money he had left after paying off the crime boss. With that in mind, I gave the brother commoner stats, figuring a trained rogue going up against someone who isn't a fighter should be pretty one-sided. We have a pretty light-hearted game, so I thought it would be a funny moment to one-shot him and also highlight how far the rogue has come vs his brother who had never worked for anything. When the show down eventually happened, the rogue bluffed his way passed all the guards that his brother had hired. With reliable talent and expertise, he is unable to roll below a 27 on deception, so he easily convinced the guards that he was a newly hired guard himself. There was an RP stand off where the brother tried to weasel his way out of fighting, but eventually the rogue did indeed one-shot him, dealing double his max HP in a single attack. After the session, the player complained that he thought it was a bit anti-climactic, and I felt a little bad for the finale of his backstory arc not playing off the way he had imagined. Judges, should I have given his target a level-appropriate statblock despite the story I was given, or is it reasonable to say that just because a character is a plot boss, it doesn't mean they're necessarily a gameplay boss? I throw myself at your mercy. Oh, hey Jake. Didn't see you come in. How's it going?

To the Justices Murphy, Tanner, and Axford... meow ;). To the bailiff hssss! In my early days of DMing I was really worried about making fights unbalanced (either too hard or too easy) so I would not give my monsters hit points. Instead I would determine behind the screen, without my players knowledge, when it felt "right" for a monster to die. It went well for my games so I posted about it on reddit, only to be lambasted and promptly dressed down by the community for fudging rolls and railroading my players. One person even wrote an essay of a comment in which they said my players were lions and I was refusing to let them hunt. Over time I've learned to let go of control over combat to such an extent but I still remain quietly adamant that for a newbie DM this was perfectly acceptable. I leave it in the paws (we can have fun here) of the court. Was I wrong to deprive my lions of their hunt, or was I right to protect myself from getting bit. P.S does justice axford have any Hades 2 hot takes she would be willing to share?.

To the venerable Supreme Crit Justices and the (insert adjective per Justices' mood) Bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of the failed assassination that successfully killed my friendship. Last year DMed a campaign for coworkers at a seasonal job where 16 players were part of the same guild. Each session was a different job that up to 5 players could take. One of the players, let's call her Beth, was one of my closest friends at the job and this was her first experience playing D&D. To my delight, she really loved playing and became one of the regulars. She played a rogue, and her backstory involved her fleeing her duty as a member of a foreign court's Queen's Guard after they accused her of stealing royal jewels. During one session, Beth's character was led away from the party to a nearby bathroom where an assassin from her former court attacked her. Beth irl looked shocked and became dispondent. She just kept repeating that she didn't even know what she could do. I was confused since at this point she'd been a very active player for at least 8 sessions and had shown a good grasp of the rules. I reminded her that her character was still alive, so all the options on her character sheet were still available. Several party members also chimed in to tell her she could yell if she wanted backup since they were just outside the bathroom. Beth continued to say she didn't know what to do, and elected to do nothing and pass her turn. Eventually, one of the other party members made up a reason to go to the bathroom, and normal combat began. While her party saved her and detained the assassin, Beth continued to pass her turn for the rest of the session. (Yes, it was uncomfortable.) After the session, she said she didn't understand why I wanted her character to die and stop playing. I was shocked. My intention was to let her character get some time in the spotlight. Beth did not participate for the rest of the campaign and stopped speaking to me unless it was work related. Justices, was I wrong to DM an assassination attempt on Beth's character?

To the indomitable priests and priestess of dice Christ and the middling alter Boy. I present to you the sin of retiring the blessed. The first campaign I ever ran started with a goblin ambush. Everything went about how you'd expect except for a single goblin Archer, who would later be named Kerg. Kerg rolled 5 natural 20’s (his only rolls) in the encounter. He crit twice, and was the only one to escape the encounter flawlessly. Naturally he became a recurring villain. I expected Kerg to die in the second encounter, the party had grown stronger, but he escaped again. In the first campaign Kerg had around 30 rolls and did not roll below an 18. Kerg has since become a plane hopping vampire Lord and appeared in 3 other campaigns as a side character. Over 100 rolls Kerg has never rolled lower than a 14 and average is around 18-19. (all different dice have been used). The problem is I haven't used Kerg in 5 years. Part of me is afraid of ruining this insane streak and another part of me thinks Kerg deserves a full campaign as the BBEG after the original fizzled out. Am I denying dice Christ one of his blessed creatures? Or am I right to try to hold onto the streak and try to give Kerg a proper campaign like he truly deserves?

Hello my illustrious judges. Oh hey Jake. I hate to bring this up in court, but you still owe me $20. I've been playing Monster of the Week, a game that really plots itself like a TV show. Suffice it to say, my dm and a fellow player (has the best poker face of all of us) ganged up to create an end-of-season-esque finale where the player revealed she was possessed. I was blown away by this storytelling, and this "episode" has rolled into about 6 sessions. In our last session, the demon (played by the same player) tried to kill a favorite NPC. I usually don't take stuff like this personally, but the phrase, "I'm trying to kill him, but you guys just won't let me," has been echoing in my head, and it's starting to impact the way I see her in real life. Am I overreacting, or am I allowed to feel this strongly about a traumatized, fictional teenager? I await my judgment with humility and grace, and I open myself to punishment if your honors see fit to dole them out. Footnote: in the past, she's said that she can't separate herself fully from the moral compass of her characters. It just makes the attacks against the npc feel personal. Also Jake, please, I just lost my job and I know you have the money. Pay me back.

I do love dnd court, but it would be really nice to have a surprise round soon; it’s been so long since we were last graced by the grinch

manifesting When Did Things Come Out

To the sweet, supple, and sensuous judges, and the woman in a shockingly realistic Jake costume—Hell, it could be Bailiff Jake himself— I present to you the case of the vampiric vibe avoidant PC. About two years ago, my amazing roommate DMed a vampire hunting one shot for our friends which was set in late nineteenth century Transylvania. She was meticulous in curating a certain spooky aura for the evening, even lighting candles throughout the otherwise dark room and wearing a black cape throughout the session. With a story taking place during such a specific time and place, one would assume that the players would create characters that at least somewhat match the energy, but one friend (let's call her Z), a first time player, insisted on role playing as a valley girl-esque 21 year old interpretive dance major at UCLA named Chastity, all the while being adamant that she’d maintain a toxic long distance text relationship with her boyfriend Chad back in California. Upon frequent gentle yet exasperated reminders from our saintly patient DM that her intention was for us to play a Victorian gothic horror session, the friend argued that she could play whatever she wanted as long as she was still hunting vampires, even if that involved her role playing texting her Californian situationship. Wise judges, was my friend in the wrong for refusing to adhere to the DM’s carefully curated vibe of the one shot, or am I just being too grumbly towards a first time player exploring the magic of dnd? I seek your wisdom and prostrate my humble self before your greatness.

Before the honorable Judges and esteemed Baliff, I bring you the Case of the Two Tables. For the past two years, myself and another DM alternate which of our two games is playing each week, both of which updated to 2024 rules after their release. Our core player groups are very consistent and enjoyable, but recently the encounter balance is not. While both games tend towards cinematic "one or two big encounter adventuring days", I've noticed recently that our monster design differs heavily and it has started to affect the morale of shared player group. I believe my homebrew designs are relatively in line with published material, GM #2 tends to design monsters that have many resistances, Immunities, and proficiency in most saving throws even for the lowly grunts, often including physical damage resistances. One table feels like it heroically defeats foes while the other barely hangs on after encounters that are beginning to feel antagonistic. This has led to frustrations for players feeling their PC are underpowered when compared across games, particularly over martial classes. Should I bring this feedback to the other GM, or should I focus on encounter balance at my own table to be satisfying for those players? Am I overreaching as a fellow GM and Player if I reach out with my concerns?

To the esteemed justices and I think his name is something like Jarge, I bring the case of the dishonorable disintegration. I have been DMing a campaign for some of my friends for the past five years. Since we have been playing for so long, everyone is super invested in their characters and the story, and our adventures are well known by our wider friend group. A while back, the party, through some unfortunate rolls, found themselves unexpectedly fighting a beholder. On the Beholder's turn, I ended up rolling its disintegration ray attack, and asked the targeted player how much HP he had left. He ended up passing the dexterity save, but when I rolled damage, the halved damage was exactly enough to bring him down to 0 HP. I solemnly narrated him turning to dust before the horrified party, who had no way to revive him. They managed to kill the beholder on the next turn, and I ended the session there, as they started frantically gathering up his ashes. A few days later, I realized that, unlike some of the beholder's other attacks, if you pass the save on the disintegration ray, you do NOT take half damage, and my player should have actually have survived. However. In the time since the session and this realization, I had already worked out a cool scene with my dead player where his demi-god mother used up the last of her powers, which she had been saving for the whole campaign, to revive him. Also, one of the other players had made an actual flow chart to map out how their character would go through grieving this loss. Also, I and my players had already received condolences from many of our friends, most of whom do not even play DND! Since the player was going to be revived anyway, I decided to just keep my realization to myself, but the knowledge has weighed on me ever since. I ask the court, was I wrong to deny my players a retcon they were technically owed? P.S. One of my players is actually the person who introduced me to NADDPOD so what's up man please don't razz me too hard for this

To the little-stain Judges and my honorable fellow Bailiff, I present the case: Stirges- the Elsa Defense. May it please the court! My dad is running a campaign for me, the Dragon of Icespire Peak. It is the first campaign for both of us using 5E 2024! It’s only us two, so we decided that I should have an NPC/PC that I control during combat. One Druid (me) and one Paladin. The incident happened on a fateful night, exploring a castle. No less than 13 stirges appeared. Our characters were level 3, and had already been in a fight, so I was worried. They’re easy enough to kill, but I had four attached to me. Instead of taking a full action to remove a SINGLE stirge, I asked him if I could thunderwave myself. I said I was fully willing to take whatever damage I did. This caused a discussion about thunderwave that went on for a hot minute. He brought up the “Elsa Defense,” which refers to Elsa from Frozen 1. He argued that Thunderwave is expelled from your body; similar to when Elsa gets upset in the tower, sending a shockwave of ice out from her. He said there wasn’t a way that I could target myself. I eventually acquiesced, because he is the DM. -But I ask!! Was I wronged? Or is my dad right? Is a “fifteen foot cube, originating from you” too vague? Can you target yourself for spells? I prostrate myself, humbly awaiting your fair judgement. [I coined the Elsa Defense, he didn’t know what I was talking about, for the record.]

Your most gracious justices I stand before you and some guy who keeps yelling and hitting the gavel confused and a little sad. I have been playing dnd with my friends for about 10 years. Over the 10 years I have grown to love the game and often find myself reading rules and stats for funsie. I have never tried a spell caster but thought "why not" as we started a new campaign. I am playing an eladrian bard and honestly have been disappointed that my DM doesnt allow things I thought was chill and fun. I also recently started to DM for my group as well to give our forever DM a chance to take a break. I thought since I love the game and feel frustrated at times I should step up and try to DM. I will give 2 examples for the sake of your precious time!! For example I tried to use unseen servant as an aid that required us to find a key hidden in some fruit while combat ensued. I commanded the servant to open the fruit and that is it. In hopes on my turn I could have 2 fruit opened at the same time given another party memeber had gone down and there was about 25 fruits to check but was told my servant couldnt do it? I was like "Bestie wait I thought i could do simiple tasks" to which he said "Nothing that advanced". I read the abilities out loud to which no reaction from my DM. The turn past and I opened only one fruit while my servant stood there doing nothing as confused as I am. Additionally, I recently was exploring an area of a castle looking for a specific symbol in paintings. This lead to a tense encounter with a known baddie that i defused and was told to go back to my room. my DM alluded some magic had happened to me. Another party memeber used detect magic to find out what happened and our DM said it was some 5th level memory magic. Immediately I knew it was modify memory but I was never asked to roll a wisdom save. I didnt say anything and let my party memeber do his thing until the DM confirmed the spell. I will admit I was annoyed but I was just trying to bring good table vibes. I gently said "But I didnt do any type of save" to which my DM just said something like "Ah hes very powerful" to which I said "I thought I got to wisdom save and since Im Fey I got advantage?" He didnt really say anything as my table is very chaotic and we both got distracted by someone spilling a drink ala Judge Caldwell style. Even so the moment had passed and I didnt want to make it awkward so I let it go. I adore my DM and we have gotten so close the past year as hes helped me with my own DM adventures and learning to play mtg commander during our free time. I just cant help but to be disappointed at times and it adds up. I see how hard he works and manages some of our more wild or less knowledgeable party memebers so I feel bad saying anything. But also since Ive been DMing I notice these things even more. I dont know if I just let this go since it happens so rarely or what? Thus I am sad and confused

To the most honorable justice Axford, the honorable justices Murphy and Tanner, the bailiff Justin (or something), and the court stenographer Tucker, I bring you the case of the “meta-gamed” riddle. I was recently playing a winter Eladrin Oath of vengeance paladin who worshipped the moon goddess. One session, the party was separated and the DM presented my character with a riddle, and then cut away to a different character so I could have time to work on cracking it. I was really struggling, so I asked my fellow players for help (out of character). We worked together to solve it, but I noticed one of my party members and friend had gotten really quiet, but the session was wrapping up so I didn’t think much of it. After the session, that friend texted me saying asking my fellow players for help with the riddle was meta gaming because “if you’re not smart enough to solve the riddle then neither is your character”. Before I even had a chance to respond, I had been blocked from her. An hour later, I received a message from the DM saying I had been kicked from the table because my fellow player would no longer play if I was there. (The Dm and this player were dating) And thus died my favorite character I’ve ever built. Justices, I ask you, was I meta gaming by asking my friends for help with a riddle, or was I screwed over for no clear reason? I humbly await your judgement, Wren (they/them) P.S. I had never had any conflict with this person prior, nor any conflict with anyone else at the table P.P.S. I loved my Paladin character so much I based the outfit I wore to prom on them

To the lavender-scented judges and the stinky bailiff Jonk. I bring forth the case of the illiterate pseudodragon. My pact of the chain warlock and party were in a trial that involved stealing an egg guarded by a dragon and her magical wards. For my turn, I had my lovely pseudodragon familiar (who can understand common and draconic) fly to the egg and read the draconic glyphs guarding it, then translate the deets to me via our telepathic bond. My dm ruled that my familiar can’t read because “although it understands draconic, it cannot speak or read”. I lost the argument but have since stayed salty. Judges, am I wrong to be offended on behalf of my son who is a very smart and special boy?! I prostrate myself before your 80 foot tall bench.

To the sexy judges and the pretty but approachable bailiff, I submit the case of the final session backstab. I recently played my farewell session before moving as a fey ranger in my friend’s campaign. One of our friends had her last session right before and ascended to the fey high court. I let him know that my character had a full life and was open to whatever closure he saw fit, including death. He said cool and the only campaign related communication I had from him before our session was him sending my a Titania (my ex’s) stat block. The session was interesting; instead of planning with me he had a devil we opposed, mammon, sign an in real life multi-page contract with another player assuring my death in exchange for several boons. I later found out that they negotiated outside the table for several hours. This player was evil in a good aligned campaign but right before our mission I tried to reconcile, show trust, and even gave him my custom bow, the queensguard. I survived but all I could do during the session was encourage my teammates to let me die so they could escape hell. I feel duped and like the session ended anticlimactically. Am I overreacting and not appreciating my amazing dm’s efforts or should I have been involved differently?

To the Beautiful Baby Boy Bailiff Jake, and Supreme Crit Justices, may it please the court that I bring to you the case of the Selfish Dungeon Master. Me and my boyfriend were invited to play in a Dragonlance campaign that a coworker of mine was running, despite our little experience. For reference, everyone we were playing with had played in other campaigns, but this was the first time my coworker was DMing. The DM told us that she had been pushed out of another campaign as a player, due to that DM’s girlfriend being jealous of her. As her friend I sided with her, until I saw how she was as a DM and person. Throughout the game she was running for us, she used her same PC from the old campaign as an NPC in the new campaign, which was fun for awhile, but it continued to feel like we were completing her old character’s story instead of developing our new character’s stories amongst the party. For example, her old PC canonically had a daughter in their old campaign, which the DM had secretly follow us on a mission meaning we then had to protect her for the rest of the campaign. She kept making a romantic story line for her 13 year old daughter NPC, with our 12 year old bard of the party. We then later on found out that her fiance was also playing the same character from the old campaign, meaning he had ties to the NPC daughter and had a duty to protect her. The DM would also insist that “we all hated combat” and make dungeon crawls and puzzles the most boring part of the game, and making my druids cool spells lackluster despite my best efforts, and basically showed us the big-bad’s stat block during our last session to show us how much we “all” didn’t want to fight him because it would be boring. Overall, it made my and my boyfriend’s first full campaign experience extremely disappointing, not to mention as him and I both start attempting to DM a new group do we realize all of the wrong things she told us about the game. So judges, I ask you as an honorable critizen of DnD, should the DM and their fiance have brought their old PC’s into a new campaign in an attempt to finish their story? Or should they have left it in the past to allow newbie players have their stories told?

To the magnanimous justices and the bailiff who’s really been dead the entire time, I bring the case of the Chumpified Beholder - My group of friends have been playing together for about five years now, and in our last session the DM had us encounter a beholder - the first any of us have ever fought. It was set up to be a tense, deadly combat. Hoping to start out strong, I had my paladin cast blinding smite on the monster. Our DM wasn't totally sure how to rule how blindness would affect the beholder, and landed on rolling luck checks for each eye beam. Wanting to get the most out of my successful blinding, I asked if the eye beam description specified that it had to be a creature the beholder could see. Turns out the manual did say that, meaning the beholder had a wasted turn. No eye beams, no legendary actions. Which was great - a free round for the PCs, hooray! - except on subsequent turns, the beholder failed its saving throw again. And again. And again. What should've been an epic foe turned into little more than a blind, floating dog biting at us with disadvantage. Justices, we avoided the Total Party Kill, but did my ill-timed question totally kill the party? Thanks and peace and all that.

To the Jubilous Justices and Bountiful Baliff...I wanna say Tucker, I bring you the case of the Shish-Ka-Bob. Several years ago in a home game I played in college I played a Changeling rogue named Ka who during a battle with a demon that I taunted, and some nat 1 fire bolts from a fellow party member, died. We weren't high enough level so no revivify, so I brought in a new character, no big deal. The problem lies here, my party member was a homebrew scorpion man race, who in their culture honored the dead by eating them...my party made shishkabobs out of my Rogue and then tried to feed it to my new character. Ultimately the home game fizzled out soon after, but I ask you Justices was it right for them to eat my old character?

To the honorable supreme crit justices and of course the traveling bailiff parma-jake, I humbly present to you my case. Last year, I joined an already ongoing game that my sister was playing in. Before I joined, all of the players gave me a 2 hour long lore presentation, a part of which was them introducing their characters. One player who was about ten years older than the rest of us (30s vs 20s) explained that in the beginning of the campaign she was just watching the group play, but then got exasperated with them, and made a character so she could “tell them what to do because they kept making stupid decisions.” She and the other players laughed this off like it was funny, so I thought she was exaggerating. However, true to her word, once we started playing, her character didn’t engage at all expect to interject and tell the group their plans were stupid and that we should change them… Justices, what the fuck??? No one else seemed that bothered by it, but when I brought it up to my sister afterwards she told me she also didn’t like it but didn’t want to say anything. So I ask the justices, am I crazy to be bothered by this??? Is this normal behavior and I’m just over-reacting??? I humbly await your judgement, whatever that may be.

Honorable judges! Humble bailiff! I bring to you a case of an unfair DC. I am playing a beast master ranger with a squirrel familiar. Our party was tasked with freeing some kidnapped children from locked cages. Our DM stated that we could perform a sleight of hand check, with a lower DC if we had thieves tools. Totally reasonable. I asked if I could have my squirrel make the check, with a lower DC, as the squirrel has tiny little fingers and claws that could easily reach inside the lock. Judges, our DM not only denied me this benefit but also increased the DC! I went along with it (because I am a delight at the table), and we did eventually rescue the children, but I maintain that this was unfair! I humbly ask for a fair ruling and punishment for the guilty party.

Esteemed Judges and Henry, I give you now the opportunity to preside as High Council over the Nine Hells, a Deal I’m sure you’ll want to take. As the Administrators of Avernus, I would ask you to allow me to present a fiendish case of a Devil’s deal to you. I am the DM, and my players are currently in Thanatos, the Abyssal realm of Orcus, Demon Lord of Undeath. My Cleric has a long history with the Hells, and despite her piousness is actually a Cambion with an Archdevil father. Recently, the group stumbled upon a devil—the right hand of Mephistopheles, who told them he’d make a deal with them to give them lots of information (summarized: a huge lore dump involving the Cleric’s family and her immortality) in exchange for a very powerful artifact—the phylactery of Orcus himself. The Cleric made a comment post-session that the deal never said the phylactery had to be intact. This was a genuine oversight on my part as the DM, but while I do think that is very clever, I simply cannot see a powerful archwizard demigod like Mephistopheles struggling to put the phylactery back together at all, and therefore I plan to have a scene where the devil that was sent puts the phylactery back together effortlessly, while grinning at the players. I as the DM feel kind of bad, as I do want to reward the clever behavior from my players. But I am also of the mind that things simply are not fair when you make deals with devils. What say you, High Arbiters of Lord Asmodeus Himself?

Judgestices and baeby-boy, I come to you with a case. I ask you: when does one roll for Stealth? Foolishly, you might think as soon as a player advises that they would like to sneak around, but I disagree heartily. To roll for stealth immediately is oft to know if one succeeds or fails immediately. However, I subscribe to a different school of thought. When my players asked to roll stealth to sneak past a drow raiding party, I nodded serenely and allowed them to move their tokens on the battlemap. They were trepidatious, and when they asked to roll stealth, I informed them that it was not yet time. It was only at the apex of tension, when getting caught might have spelled a moment of disaster, that I finally asked them to roll. They all rolled sub-ten. They were caught out, poorly positioned, and though they succeeded in battle, it was a difficult fight and one character was nearly dragged away into the darkness by a giant spider. My players complained that they should have rolled and been seen right away, not when they were caught awkwardly between two subgroups of drow scouts, but I disagree. Should a failure of stealth not represent a true failure, being caught out of position, mid-sneakery? Particularly when accompanied by a nat 1? When we roll to attack with our greatswords, we do not do so from thirty feet away. We must get close! We must put ourselves at risk! We must seek danger to find glory! Thus do I also present this idea for the Tortles! I know you're hiding under those powdered wigs. I'm accepting potential partners for my patented Don't You Roll That Dice Yet system, where the roll is typically not made until the chance for Drama presents itself. Give me eggs a la mode, simmered in butter, and then we can talk terms.

To the ephemeral judges, and the Bailiff, Chase, I present to you the case of the Dungeon Meltdown. My party and I followed a trail to a cock-fighting ring, where it was revealed that my Beast Master’s chicken summon had escaped from it mere days before. The party split as we infiltrated the arena, our paladin and I were able to cast buffs for my chicken as she braved the fighting ring, and our monk and barbarian grabbed intel from the arena’s owner in the VIP area. As the fights went on, the owner of the arena recognized my chicken summon as one of his own fighting beasts, and demanded my party members return the beast to him. The arena fight paused as we deliberated, and I, not seeing any other way out as the owner asked for his beast back, said “I run.” My DM told us to roll initiative, then said he needed to take 5. When he returned he was agitated, and kept muttering that he had not done a good job of laying the clues out that we needed to follow. As we started the encounter that was likely a TPK, we rolled so poorly that my DM yelled at us and started demanding that we re-roll our attacks. The energy plummeted, my party and I trying to keep it light by joking about our terrible rolls as the DM unraveled. He eventually ended the session early, (something I thought he should have done fifteen minutes before) and the party nearly fled the game store we play at. After two cancellations in our weekly game, the DM sent an apology to our discord group, but flipped saying that he had felt frustrated that the party wasn't motivated in finding the clues. He also stated that we would not be retconning. Judges, I was taking notes through the entire interaction. If there was a clue that I missed in what we were supposed to do, it was likely drowned in the chatter of the game shop. Was I wrong to jump the gun and flee? Or is my DM in the wrong for refusing to retcon? I humbly await your judgement.

To the holy deacons of Dice Christ, I prostrate myself in search of absolution. I believe I scared a player away from the hobby forever and gave him real life nightmares. Several years ago, I started DMing for a group of my coworkers, mostly new players. One of them, we'll call him Roland, had neither played nor seen a liveplay before, so I helped him make a half elf rogue. Roland was flaky and missed 2 or 3 sessions out of the first 5 or 6. He was also having trouble with the rules and mechanics, at least partially because he was only showing up intermittently. I tried my best to help him, as did the one experienced player at the time, but I was a new DM who was new to 5e with mostly new players. The fateful encounter was with a Roper monster hanging from a stalactite, the players were 3rd level so it's a hard encounter but doable. The roper has several long tentacles that grapple and pull you in so it can eat you. Roland in particular kept getting grappled and could not escape (rogues have low strength) and I forgot you could use dexterity instead to escape a grapple, which would have helped him immensely. Roland's character was downed and about to be eaten, saved by the Paladin who allowed himself to be grappled and reined to get in range for lay on hands. Afterwards Roland told me he was gonna go home and have nightmares about this. I thought it was a joke at first, but then he added "I have a real life phobia of tentacles." Well, Roland completely ghosted us after that session and never played with us again. He also shortly left that job and transferred to a different store. Last I heard he moved out of the area a year later.

The the esteem and Mose noble of judges, and the lowly Bailiff who moonlights as a turtle. This happened many years ago with a party I still play with, prior to my DM’s foray into Homebrew, we played almost every module 5e had to offer. It was in this era when we played Tyranny of Dragons, one of the most unbalanced modules in the game. My slight? The party had squared off against Tiamat. Between my Grave Cleric and the Storm Sorcerer/Tempest Cleric - we had a singular attack of nearly 600 damage, and so my DM stated that the breath weapons would be targeted on us. While the Sorcerer had Blink activated, my Cleric was at the mercy of the attack. However upon hitting a natural 20 on my dexterity save, I thought I would be able to halve the damage. But alas, I had only a +2 to Dexterity and completely unable to make the save regardless. My ask is, why did my DM ask for the roll even if a Natural 20 would not save me?

To the Right Honorable Sweeties of the Court and the Naughty Bailiff, I present the case of the Unjust Epilogue: My husband and I were playing in a Pathfinder campaign for about a year before I got a new job and could no longer commit to regular sessions. The other players and GM were more my friends than his, and he didn't want to play without me, so we both informed the GM that we'd be leaving the campaign after the next few scheduled sessions. The GM was annoyed, which I understand, but the group planned to continue playing without us, so I thought it was no big deal. Then at our last session, the GM narrated an epilogue in which my character, a pixie psychic, was exiled from the material plane, taken back to the feywild and imprisoned for insulting a fae prince. My husband's character, a dwarf fighter seeking to restore his family's honor, was cursed after finding a dragon's hoard then executed by his traitorous brother. She narrated these epilogues for nearly an hour while everyone else sat in relative silence. Afterwards, we basically got up and left. My question is, was our GM right to exile and execute our characters, or did they deserve a more peaceful ending? We actually haven't seen or spoken to her since this happened, I don't know if she's still mad at us. Lol.

For the beautiful full length, high waisted pants that are the justices, and the little daisy duke bailiff Jort - halfway between a case and a confession: I am part of a D&D group filled with Sunday brunch laughter and joy that plays every couple of months. However, things have recently divulged into chaos. The player whose house we play at has two delightful children (1 and 4) as well as two puppies. I know how this sounds - but judges these sweet babies and puppies are out of control. In the last session, mid deep sea witch big bad battle, I stopped the 1 year old from biting a lamp cord and pulling a tv on themselves, while the parent player talked his 4 year old down from a meltdown, and my friend, another player, tried to stop the two dogs from attacking the arriving mail man literally si-mul-tane-ously. Judges - Our DM did not pause once. When I brought it up to her and suggested we pause, she said “oh - I didn’t even really notice. We’re here all the time and it’s just sort of white noise to us.” I suggested we play at another house, and we did - but due to a child / pet care fall out the babies and dogs all came over to a totally separate house - completely unannounced - and it divulged into chaos once again - the DM not pausing and simply shrugging, and us unable to finish our battle. I feel like a terrible person because I'm upset over actual babies and puppies, two of the most well known good things on the planet. Am I evil? Is there anyway out of this other than Murph's get new friends plan? I eagerly await and accept your punishment/decision. *For added info: I am about a decade younger than the rest of my group - they're 40 and I'm 30 (freshly 30 - a couple of days ago!)*

To the glorious justices and that guy who reads the cases, jack I think his name is, I come to you with a case from my very first campaign back in high school. I joined midway through their curse of straud campaign and took inspiration from the one and only Moonshine Cybin and made a myconid circle of spores Druid. I spoke with our DM and he was excited for me to play something more unique instead of the standard Edge lord rouge or true good paladin like some other players in the campaign. Come to the first few sessions, I am constantly getting knocked unconscious and rolling death saving throws due to my low AC :( I spoke with my DM and he offered to drop some loot that would raise my AC. Well we get our loot drop and he does indeed inform us of a ring that grants +2 AC. Our 20+ ac Paladin and Barabarian ended up deciding it would be best if one of them had it because “how cool they would be”. I argued that because I was constantly being downed maybe it would be better for me as opposed to one of them, who almost never got hit. They ultimately told me that I was playing a support class and that I shouldn’t be getting up in the mix anyways. Was I wrong to be so disappointed that I didn’t get to play an epic mushroom that was big swinging just because they wanted to be “impossible” to hit? I humbly and eagerly await your all knowing judgement.

Long time listener, first time squaller. To the most jovial judges and Jocelyn, I come to you humbly and desperately requesting dice advice re. my recent meta-gaming mishap and the absolute land mines that lie ahead of me. We’re 6 months in as a party of all first-time players, comprised of my husband (our DM), my brother-in-law, and another couple/friends we met in college. My husband/DM/dungeon husband and I have talked about running Strahd in the distant future, inspired by a certain trio of entrepreneurs. You see where this is going. Flash forward to our Friday session last month, where, mid-combat, my brother in law, a wizard rogue remembers an OPed item he pocketed months back, and promptly plane-shifts us out of our boss fight. My husband had no choice but to drop us into the next planned arc several months ahead of schedule. Our levels, and my heart, sank as the mist settled in around our party, while the Triplet’s latest fresh Friday episode drop still echoed in my ears. I’m the only player who’s a NADDPOD listener and my husband has been putting in overtime and doing a great job shaking up and shaping his own variation of Barovia and characters, keeping in mind what context I have. We’re having a great time but I’m really struggling to not metagame and railroad some of the parties decisions. (This past Friday we broke into the basement of the church and fought Father Donvovitch’s vampire brother, nearly resulting in a couple deaths, before even talking to the priest. I protested against the decisions harder than I would have otherwise) Favored judges, what advice would you offer someone in my shoes? What helps you step into your characters decision making and set aside the logical (or in this case, sometimes clear) route, especially with the module fresh in my mind? Context: I play a Druid and already and already am less of a front-lines fighter. Considering a subclass to help shake up my instincts, since I played this build fairly safe, and will step back on bigger decisions. P.S - Please be nice to my worm husband. Whomst among us hasn’t accidentally given out an OPed magic item? P.P.S - The Burger Master absolutely did not go unnoticed. We might call him Patty.

Blessed messengers of Dice Christ, but especially high priestess Emily. I come before you with a confession. I was playing a (similar but legally distinct from Moonshine) Druid named Immeral Greenmire in a Wild West campaign. We were clearing out monsters from a mine including a hydra who almost killed Merl, through it all I held onto my one level 4 spell slot, because the real challenge was supposed to be a hive of evil monster bees, and I had a plan. When we came upon the hive Merl cast Conjure Woodland Beings, creating a spectral army of baby possums after the image of his own possum familiar, Pawcifer. By Dice Christ, I thought the bees would be stronger, but my baby possums did 5d10 damage to everything within 10 ft of me. The evil bees couldn’t even touch me. What followed was an absolute slaughter as my spectral army of baby possums tore through the bees Return of the King Style. My companions barely lifted a weapon and just a couple rounds in dozens of bees had perished. The DM, audibly sweating through Discord ruled that three of the bees would get attacks on me before dying. That’s not how that works, but at this point I felt bad and didn’t feel any need to argue. I passed every Con Save and made short work of the rest of the bees. I feel like I turned a pretty intense combat trivial. I realize now that I should have simply dropped the spell a couple rounds in, so my companions could be more active in the fray and so my DM didn’t get whomped quite so hard. (Shout out to the DM who played along with lots of Merl Shenanigans and gave Pawcifer his own cowboy hat) I beg Dice Christ’s forgiveness.

Howdy Ultimate Crit Justices, but especially the always correct Justice Axford and shoutout to the Baliff for his sexy halloween costume of a baliff for the court. I bring forward the case of the night circus. This was several years ago when me, a player of only one other campaign ( playing a sorceror and my two friends who had never played DND (a bard and a druid) , all played with a semi-experienced DM. In our first session, we entered a town and asked what was around and found out there was a circus. Our druid's whole thing was about the protection of animals and assumed that a circus with animals would be abusing them. We have arrived in the daytime, assuming that like most circus it would only be open at night, but as we sneaked onto the premises, our dm "suprised" us with the realization that this was a day circus. We argued that made no sense but eventually gave up. We got into a long dragged out fight trying to free the animals that had both druid and I knocked out and the bard using the only helpful spell, speak with animals to use the animals to fight off the circus trainers (the dm didn't guide the bard with spell choices, so she had no healing or combat spells). There was also DM NPC (who we later found out was an old pc of the dms) who unlike us who were first level was 15 level wizard in a parrot body, but refused to help us and insisted that if killed, had a never ending supply of copies of himself stored somewhere ready to be activated at any time. Finally the fight finished and the dm asked our bard to roll perception, they did well and they revealed that the animals nails were clean and they looked very round and healthy. That we had jumped to conclusions! Another super fun surprise. Justices, did any of the DM's choices make any goddamn sense, was he just try to have his gotcha moment? Or were we fools because like justice murphy always says, "this is a fantasy world, you can't put in real life facts." I humbly await your judgment. P.S I later confronted my DM about the NPC and they admitted they don't like dming that much but felt it was the only way to play together and only really wanted to play. I razzed him very much for this, and I did get to kill his NPC and he never came back as an apology.

Today I supplicate myself before the most revered case reviewers, the ever reputable & regularly irrefutable justices of the supreme crit - Axford, Murphy, and Tanner - and the least baleful but most playful bailiff there ever was - Jake - to spin my woeful tale of “The Little Rope of Climbing That Could (Have Lifted Me Out of a Sticky Situation).” The weekend before last, my party engaged a sticky foe in the depths of a cave system leading us into the abyss. We had been investigating an abyssal disease that had wiped out the majority of a nearby myconid hive when we stumbled across a creature who quickly impersonated an NPC important to one of our party member’s backstory. Upon further inspection, the facade collapsed and we found ourselves facing an intelligent and extremely deceptive slime creature. The DM gave this mini-boss a plethora of frightening abilities from an amalgamation of other deadly creatures across published source materials, including a psychic attack which consumed important memories if we failed a wisdom save. However, the specific ability leading me to make this inquiry was something much, much more detrimental… Based on a lair action of the juiblex, the creature spewed a fetid pool of slime in a 10-foot cube which had the unfortunate power to trap players (me) within it until they (me) were able to pass a DC 21 strength save. Now, my monk (named Ela, rhymes with Kayla) really likes to hit things with his quarterstaff, and being stuck to the ground made that really hard to do. Fair enough, the DM (my lovely partner and tormentor of monks) designed a good monster and challenge for our party. Here’s where the sticky gets tricky. Ela has a rope of climbing, which has come in handy many a time in our adventure thus far. Knowing that with my -1 to strength I would NEED to crit to escape the slime, I pulled out my trusty rope with the hope that I wouldn’t have to mope and simply cope until one of my party members was free to assist me and that I could instead nope out of there myself using some quick thinking. The rope of climbing responds to verbal commands, can move 10 feet per action, tie and knot itself where directed, and move the other end as a bonus action. I argued that if I used my action to tie the rope of climbing to the stalagtite not far above me, and used my bonus action to command the other end that I tied around my waist to raise me, I should be able to be lifted out of the slime without making the saving throw AT THE COST OF my action and bonus action for the round. My DM (who is shaking her head at me in disappointment as I write this) rejected my proposal and told me I would still need to pass the saving throw in order to have the rope lift me from the slime. I argued that a magical rope capable of lifting up to 3000 pounds should be capable of bypassing a strength check of 21 to carry my sticky monk to safety. My usually-wise-but-in-this-case-wrong DM rejected my line of reasoning and urged me to stop arguing, make the roll, and finish my turn (the other two party members, my best friends, looked about ready to throttle me for extended and hopeless negotiation with the DM). I sighed, rolled my 18-turned-17 strength save, and lost another turn down in the muck with my little rope that couldn’t. I beseech you, wisest, fairest, and most-talented-at-guessing-when-did-things-come-out justices, please review my case and let me know: did I place too much faith in my rope of climbing and should I be sentenced to death by DIY slime? Or is my DM wrong for the first time in her life? I await your sentence with eagerness, and prepare myself for the possibility of either punishment or vindication.

Honored Crit Justices and Crit Justice Adjacents, I come to you today with a case of potential mismanagement of a table. I have been playing with some current & former coworkers for over a year now, & a few months back, one of our managers joined the table. It was a little awkward at 1st, but things have been pretty smooth since then. Recently, I changed departments, and my DM is now my direct supervisor & the manager is over the section I'm in. We all try to keep work & game separate, but it seems like it may be a recipe for a disaster if we're not careful. Your infallible guidance is greatly appreciated in this situation!

To the coruscating judges and the very solid bailiff, i bring to you the case of the Zaelyn, the Aarakocra Princess Warlock. Two years ago, i joined a dnd group in college. Our experienced DM took on a nine person party with stride and wrote a beautiful high fantasy story that lasted a year and a half before the finale with only a couple bumps here and there. in the finale, we fought the bbeg Lolth who we had met on and off since session 2 disguised as an old lady. One of our players, the Aarakocra, who was also the princess of the entire kingdom, became possessed by Lolth. Apparently, Zaelyn had a secret warlock pact with the BBEG where Lolth would eat her unhappy memories so she would never be sad. We entered PvP for two rounds, but then… We entered a cutscene. Our DM described us all fighting, and as the fight looks bleak, Zaelyn pummels toward Lolth and summons a “moonbeam like ray” that incinerates both Lolth(the god) and Zaelyn. The room was silent. In the epilogue, we were read Zaelyn’s will, which gave each player a gift from her kingdom, ranging from being queen to owning a stable... This lasted an hour. The session lasted 14 hours. I felt like I had been robbed of over twenty sessions in one fell autocratic bird swoop. Years later, I learned that the player had badgered the DM into adding their scripted death and eulogy, but the entire situation ruined the campaign for me and the other players. So I ask the court, (more specifically Murph) Who is at fault?

Greetings to the One True Crit and its Justices who reign supreme, and the superfluous Jake, I guess. I bring you the case of the monk and the (possibly) undeserved nerfing. Years ago I started to play in a campaign with a group of my friends. I played a dragonborn monk, who was really hot btw, its not relevant but I thought you should know. I was a Way of the Ascendant Dragon monk, which allowed me to choose the damage type of my unarmed strike when I hit an enemy. I had the idea that each damage type would correspond to a different martial art. Poison = Capoeira, Fire = Taekwondo, Lightning = Muay Thai, etc...I thought the idea was really fun, and my DM enthusiastically agreed, so I thought all was well with my hot martial artist. Well when it came time to play, at the top of the session before any combat or anything, he tells me that he decided that the ability was too overpowered. So I could only switch my martial art damage type after a short rest and that would be my damage until I rested again and changed it. I lightly argued that the ability was straight out of Fizbans, and wasn't that overpowered. It wasn't like I was adding any extra elemental damage, it was simply a change to the type and I still only hit for a d4 at our level. He refused to budge and thought that changing my damage on the fly would "break his combats". I didn't want to argue or delay the session for long, so I agreed. Well when it came time for combat, we ended up fighting some mook enemies that didn't have any resistances or vulnerabilities, and that was it. It was still a fun session, but at the end I was a little deflated that I couldn't really flavor my attacks how I was wanting, switching up my martial arts and hitting with different elements, and also confused since the different types didn't really come into play either. Justices, did my hot dragonborn deserve the change that made him forget other martial art types until he meditated on it, or was I wrongly nerfed?

Dearest Honorable Crits, i present the case of personal hell. The party needed to steal a gem of planes-shifting from the villains. One player accidentally triggered one, and was warped to hell, where they began to rescue NPCs important to the party from personalized hells. The other PCs encountered a villain, who offered them a gem. Because one of the NPCs i mentioned was one of their husbands. The player was so intent on getting to that scene that she didn't ask any questions, and they were consequently trapped in their own personal hell and missed it entirely. As DM, did i utterly fail to reinforce this self-admitted villain may be lying, in seperating the party at all, or does the fault lay in another aspect?

To the most radical justices, party on, as well as our guy in the sky BeefCake, I bring to you the case of investigation cucking My group has just started curse of strahd with us doing the Monster House. Knowing how deadly it is, my DM has gone for a rewritten GM supplement, aiming for some social encounters as well so we avoid a deadly combat every room. I am running out party’s artificer and when I asked to look around a study for any hidden information, I was prompted a perception check. No big deal, can’t use my intelligence just my dumped wisdom, rolled mid and couldn’t find it. Fats forward two floors of a house later and 3 hours of playing; 6 perception checks and zero investigation. We just kept rolling until we found the secret door to move on. I ask the judges: at what point can you perceive a door when I’m asking to look at a clearly weird carving and turn it into an investigation, especially once you’ve already started changing the modular to fit your party’s play style? I throw myself before the judges but will be eating pizza and wine in the break room with baby Cake while I wait.

To the honorable jakestices and bailiff whatshisname, I humbly bring before you the Case of the Dhampir Mutineer. A few years ago, our party was on a mission to cross the high seas and save our party’s Sorcerer after she was abducted. While she waited for her original PC to be rescued, the Sorcerer played “Maria,” an Artificer who was secretly half-vampire. One fateful session, my Paladin, who had been elected captain by the rest of the party, was keeping watch at the helm. When I asked the party’s Bard, “Trevor,” to take the wheel, Maria announced that she wanted to grab the wheel instead, prompting a contested Athletics check that Trevor won easily. Maria reacted by biting him with her secret vampire fangs. I tried to avoid full PVP by grappling Maria and asking for an explanation, but instead of answering any questions, she made her robot companion shoot me in the back. The party then collectively turned on her, and Trevor, convinced that she was a full vampire, finished her off while she was rolling death saves. After tying her up, we brought Maria back to life with a Revivify spell so we could get answers (and, out of game, to give the player a second chance with the character). For the next hour, we begged her to give any explanation about the vampirism or why we should trust her going forward, while she refused to explain herself, apologize, or acknowledge any wrongdoing. When our characters stepped off to the side to discuss how to proceed, she tried to break free of her bonds and escape. We knocked her back to 0 HP, and, seeing no other course of action that made sense in character, we ultimately decided to kill her. For additional context, this was not the only time that this player initiated PVP, but it was the only time that it resulted in a character death. Justices, were we wrong to kill our friend’s character twice, or were we justified in executing an unapologetic instigator? We humbly await your judgment.

To the justices of the court who have no equal and that weird little bailiff who also has no equal (because "last" is a superlative), I submit to you the case of the Gobbled Up Ice Goblin. I play as an ice goblin druid (shout out polar orcs!) in a heavily homebrewed Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. We're strangers who've been playing online together for a year. It's a thoughtful and caring group and we've already navigated a couple of interpersonal blips at the table with maturity and respect. However, sometimes our DM can be a little heavy-handed. Usually it's fine... She's a great storyteller and we enjoy the conflict and failure required to make our story interesting. Recently, though, it felt like she crossed a line. We were in the second stage of an epic boss fight, so most of us had exhausted our resources. The monster incapacitated me and, rather than waste my turn, I used my movement to close with him and climb his leg. I told the DM my intention was to distract the monster to keep him from attacking my friends, and she asked for an athletics check. Your honors, I rolled a natural 1. The DM narrated the monster grappling me and lifting me in the air (on my turn). This is all fine... It was an entertaining cost of failure. I still had ~35% of my HP and an ability that lets me drop to 1 HP instead of 0 if I would otherwise go down. However, on the monster's next turn, the DM asked for my last words and narrated the monster putting my cute little goblin in its mouth, chewing her up, and swallowing her. No saving throw, no damage roll, nothing. I assumed she wanted to keep the party in suspense, so I went along with it and privately messaged the DM to make sure she remembered my ability to stay up after a mortal blow. My companions managed to slay the beast and pull me out of its gullet that same round, only for the DM to tell everyone that I was fully dead after suffering a "lethal blow". I was shocked! Again, there was no saving throw, no attack roll, no damage rolled, no death saves, and my magical ability was ignored. Your honors, I felt slighted! Should a critically failed skill check on my own turn be the only thing between my beloved character and oblivion? Or was my little scramble-girl wronged by an overzealous angel of Dice Christ? P.S. my fellow druid was able to make a devil's bargain with the DM to cast revivify without a spell slot, but she had to sacrifice her familiar in order to do so. It was a beautiful story moment, there were multiple people weeping at the table, and my druid and the other wrote each other very sweet journal entries after the session.

To the Honorable Crit Justices and the best of the worst bailiff,I present to you the case of the Wild Shape Spider Stun. Recently I DMed for the first time and it was for a group of 11 to 19 year-olds. I go to a co-working space where a bunch of kids go to do online schooling under guidance of a teacher, I being one of the oldest of these kids, (being one of 2 over 18s). Now when I DMed it was for 11 level two players. As you can guess that is a hard thing to give a challenge rating so for. The first encounter I decided to to use giant spiders as these players were brand new, only one of them had ever played before. In the encounter, I had to explain multiple times that a skill check would not help them against aggressive spiders, saying that no you cannot use Animal Handling to try pacify the spiders, unless you somehow get a Nat 20. All 11 players failed to hit the armour class of these spiders so many times I was questioning whether the game had been cursed by dice christ. Our druid, who was the only player who had played before, decided to Wild Shape into a spider and THEN make the check, I allowed it because corralling preteens and early teens is hard and they rolled a Nat 20. On this I allowed the spider to be stunned for one turn in confusion at seeing a new spider appear after I failed a wisdom saving throw for it. Should I have allowed this? Or should I have been stricter on the rules for new players as a new DM? Any advice would be great, I eagerly await your response.

May it please the all knowing Justices and the AI bailiff that has certainly replaced the little bitch-boy Jonk: I offer the case of the Woeful Wildshape. I was DMing a homebrew 5e campaign a few years ago and killed one of my player characters (a circle of the moon Druid we will call Xavier). In a combat encounter (they were level 10) Xavier said that he wanted to Wildshape. I had sent him a big table of animals and their respective Challenge Ratings with links to the stat block so we could both easily reference it and to give him more freedom in his animal choice several weeks before, so I naturally pulled up the table and asked what he wanted to turn into. Justices, he said that he wanted to become a dragon. Naturally I was baffled, as at that point we had been playing for at least 6 months and I had thought he knew the rules of his character. I explained that a dragon is not an animal and that he could pick a monster off the table. He stared at it for a few minutes before announcing that he wanted to Wildshape into a ghost. Yes, that’s correct, the Druid wanted to become a straight up ghost and use the ghost stats. He was clearly frustrated when I said no, and the combat began to spiral as we got more annoyed with each other and it ended with me killing his character and specifically preventing the other party members from reaching him to revive him (they were all separated early in the encounter.) Judges, am I in the wrong for punishing my player for not knowing the rules? Did Xavier deserve a second chance? Or did this disappointing Druid meet his proper end?

Dear judges and Bailiff, or dear church folks, whichever way this may fall. I'm not sure if this is a case or a confession, but I am curious as to what you would have done in my place. I DM an Underdark Noir campaign for my friends and family. One of my players, a cleric, asked to do a complicated religion check that she did not really have the spells or skills to back up. But it was a cool thing for the story, so I decided she could roll a Divine Intervention roll on a d100. She was level 7, so I told her a success would be 07 or below. She rolled zeros on both sets of dice. Part of me knew this was really a 100 and not a zero, but the whole table was so astonished that I treated it as a success. It ended up changing the direction of the campaign and helped the party create a new pantheon of gods. It was great for our story, but what would you have done? I humbly seek your mercy or forgiveness, whichever is appropriate.

To the Ever Eloquent and Eccentric Supreme Crit and the Lowly Limp Laughingstock of a Bailiff Joke Hurtwitz. I recently got onto first shift and thus started looking to finally get into a dnd game, lucky for me a game opened up at the LGS. I joined and we started a new campaign set in the aftermath of the recent almost tpk. After a few sessions I had to miss one due to needing to fix my bike (that I use to get to and from work) and while I was gone the party made a pact with a fey queen and got 2 levels as a result. When i returned I learned that I wouldn't be recieving those levels due to my absence. We were level 2 when I missed and the party was now level 4 besides me, I obviously got mad at the dm for this and we got into an argument over it. I have since left the campaign over multiple issues such as in game punishments for getting off topic. Justices was I in the right for getting mad at my dm or should I have just left it be and hope to not get my character killed

Forgive me, Justices, for I have sinned. I was a first-time DM, running Curse of Strahd after discovering D&D during covid with my brother and nephew. I thought I was ready to take the mantle, but among my players was my brother’s friend — a Tabaxi monk who tested my patience from the very start. He refused to use our virtual tabletop roller, yet somehow averaged about ten natural 20s every session. He refused to turn on his camera. He refused to do much beyond what he wanted, and I overlooked it all for the sake of keeping the game together. But after a year of play, the party finally reached Strahd’s castle. In the depths, the monk discovered the Tome of Understanding, which would grant him a bonus to Wisdom — if only he read it for forty-eight hours over the course of six days. Naturally, he demanded the party stop everything and wait while he read. Naturally, they refused. Strahd was hunting them. The final battle was upon us. And so, the monk threw a fit…and then refused to participate in the climactic fight. Here is my sin: I stooped to his level. I abandoned the VTT dice. I pulled out my real dice, and when Strahd attacked, I claimed natural 20s — and I focused those critical blows on the monk until he was dead. It was not the story that killed him. It was not the dice. It was me, my pettiness, and my DM’s wrath. I humbly ask you, Justices, for forgiveness.

To the crit on high, and the bailiff far below, I ask as a humble DM, should I have killed my player sooner, or let them live out their time-wasting fantasy longer? Years ago I ran a campaign based out of Waterdeep, starting with Dragon Heist but pulling in tales from the yawning portal elements as well. My party of 4 had to meet with a powerful person on board their ship, sitting in the docks. This powerful person owned 3 almost identical ships, all large sailing vessels, and were described as such to the party. One party member decided after their meeting that they didn't trust the Ship owner and wanted to sneak aboard the other ships to see what they were hiding. I strongly suggested that was a bad idea, and the rest of the party also didn't want to follow along. So the party goes back to homebase (they bought and renovated a local tea shop) but this character wants to solo explore the remaining ships. They managed to roll stealthily enough to get on board undetected... but after making it onto this deck, they cast darkness, centered on themselves, so it would follow with them. This is a 15 ft radius sphere of darkness... so everyone outside of this sphere can see that there is clearly some magical darkness moving across the ship. Including the sentry posted above the main mast, in the crows nest 60ft above the character. The player continues to move deeper into the ship, eventually running into the sleeping quarters and discovering nothing out of the ordinary decides he wants to head home. Unfortunately for him, the sentry who saw the random globe of darkness wandering around the ship sounded the alarm, and instead of surrendering, the level 4 sorcerer tried to fight their way out and died. The rest of the party then had to deal with the fallout of their party member killing the trust they had built up with the ship master and other important shady folks in waterdeep, so they basically disavowed the sorcerer at every opportunity. The sorcerer player had another character to play at the base, so no harm there, but continued to believe they shouldn't and couldn't have been seen by the sentry, but I maintain that a wandering ball of darkness is enough for a sentry to raise the alarm, and certainly enough reason to kill a trespasser in gang territory. Judges, Jerk, was i wrong to let this player die? Should I have given them an easier out? Should I have let them run free through an empty ship until they were bored instead of killing them? I humbly await your sentencing.

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Bailiff Junk: May it please the court, I regret to inform you that I play with a great group who is completely without that viscous drama juice, but we did get into a hefty mechanics debate during our game Sunday night. I’m the DM and we are using the 2024 ruleset with the exception of character creation so that people can use whatever subclass. I pitted my players against a Cloaker, who was casting the Mirror Image spell with his bonus action. The Phantom subclass Rogue of the party attacked him with a sneak attack, destroying one of the Cloaker’s duplicates, and then used Wails from the Grave to hit another. I ruled that since the Cloaker is the only creature in the room and Wails from the Grave states that it hits a “second creature,” that there was nothing additional to hit with it, so it fizzled. He argued since the wording of Mirror Image is that it creates duplicates, that after sneak attacking and hitting a copy, he should be able to use Wails from the Grave as another attempt to hit the Cloaker. We all had a healthy debate about this and I understand his point, but I eventually went with my original ruling that since the Cloaker is technically the only thing in the room and that Mirror Image is an illusion that doesn’t make ACTUAL copies, he couldn’t use the ability (I did not make him spend an ability charge for the attempt or anything like that). He was completely fine with that ruling and play went on as nicely as it always has, but I always want to do right by my players. So I wonder, was this the correct decision? And if it was mechanically, should I have just allowed the rule of cool to win? I humbly prostrate myself to the court.

Judges im almost out of time. My player is set on harvesting dragon vanilla. For context Im running an arch in my long standing home game heavily based on the dragon elf chronicles. The party had just killed a young brass dragon and I, wishing to be helpful, reminded their artificer that he could harvest materials from the dragon for magic items. My own brother, who is not the artificer but a 42 year old locatha paladin named "Chud", asked me immediately if he could harvest the oils around the anal gland of the dragon to make "dragon vanilla". I told him no, he rolled anyways, and got a 5 so I described him punctering the bowels of the dragon and the ensuing consequences. This did not shake him but bolstered him. He has made a vow to collect enough to make dragon vanilla blondies. I need help, theyre about to fight the dragon king and I dont want this. How do I stop him if I even can.

The Case of the Tsunami of Abyssal Chickens: Dear Esteemed Justices & Bailiff who’s probably going to stage a coup soon. I’ve been playing in a 6 year long campaign run by my best friend & it’s been incredible. For the most part. Recently the PCs were in a colosseum style battle, with each player facing a trail. My player’s challenge was fighting off 20 abyssal chickens. We’re level 15 but I was nearly obliterated. I cast an area spell that the chickens (operating as a swarm) passed with a single roll. When it was the chicken’s turn to attack, they didn’t do so as a swarm as expected. Instead, each one rolled separately. As a result, my character almost met his demise by being bum-rushed by chickens. He survived but I’m a tad salty about the sudden change in mechanics. Was my chicken-swarmed character wronged? PS, I absolutely still adore the campaign & our DM.

Dear noble justices and the ignoble bailiff jamiroquia, I come to you with a case of the statue not chosen. Towards the end of a homebrew campaign, my players won an ancient green dragon’s tournament and were awarded with choosing 3 items from her hoard. Of the options there were 2 plot focused items and various other powerful items. Among her hoard were also golden statues of hero’s and villains that the dragon had turned to gold over many centuries. I had mostly described the statues for set dressing purposes expecting my players to be drawn in by the legendary armor, weapons, bags of beans and a deck of many things. But alas, they wanted one of the statues. Not wanting to give my 10th level players an overpowered npc they had no connection with I decided to burst their excitement and told them they had to pick another item. Most of my players were cool with this but I could tell one of them was especially disappointed. Justices should I have given my players their overpowered dmpc or was I right to tell them to choose something else? PS they then chose the deck of many things and the disappointed player drew the void, sending their bard’s soul to the arch demon zuggtmoy’s lair. (which they were a good sport about)

Dear Honorable Clerics of Dice Christ, I am writing you now asking for forgiveness for a sin I committed against one of my players, I had 6 level 6 players fighting a respawning Bone Devil and during the fight the bone devil crit on the lower health warlock in the party, I rolled the dice and rolled very high, 70 damage on the dice to be exact, and the Player's max health plus his current was 72. Then, right before we fully move on to the next turn, I realize that I had neglected to add the Bone Devil's +4 to the damage, making it 74. When I brought this up, the table fell silent. I gave the warlock a beautiful death scene, but I still feel bad about getting their hopes up. I will accept any punishment you shall impart upon me.

Hello Luminous Justices and the Dim Bailiff Jake, I ask for your judgement in the case of the problem baby. My partner and I are excitedly anticipating the arrival of our first child (P.S. we are open to name suggestions besides Jake and Jake-like names). In anticipation of this, I have let my DnD table know that I will no longer be able to participate in our weekly 6-hour sessions for at least a year. While I am sad to step back from the table, I just don't see a way to balance work/childcare with our tables approach to sessions. My DM has not appreciated my request for a hiatus and is suggesting that I just "bring the baby". While this may work for some people, our sessions tend to go very long, with lots of drinking and eating, and very foul-mouthed yelling. I am concerned that exposing my young child to this environment will drastically raise the odds of them becoming a gooner. So Justices, am I right to step away from the table while I focus on my new child, or should I be looking to expose my baby to the wonders of DnD as early as possible? I humbly await your judgement.

Salutations to the everlasting Judges, and limited-time-only bailiff guest star Jake. I require a judgement. I was my groups longtime DM, but another player desired the mantle. We started a new online campaign in his world, a pirate adventure set in a small kingdom of islands. Our party has been playing together since high school, and it was the first time I was a player. I was ecstatic to dive into his ideas, hear his lore and meet his sure to be eclectic cast of characters. Perhaps too much so. I wanted to be engaged, and be supportive of his new role (pun intended). Your honors, the pace was beyond glacial. He was thrilled to role play as the NPCs, and everyone in the world had a lot to say. Everything was acted out. We wanted to tell our pirate ship to just hang out at the dock. This ended up becoming a 45 minute detour, involving telling the dock master what we were doing, telling our crew in detail the plan… there were no rolls. There were no stakes or risks involved. Nothing ended up happening later on with the dock and we never met the dock master again. We met about four characters that introduced us to each other, one in a row, until we met the wizard that gave us our quests. Not just roleplaying dragged, the new DM had made lovingly huge maps for our roll20 sessions. Many involved us simply moving tokens across the screen. Then we moved to the next map. No secrets to be found, nor choices on how to proceed. The maps were even so large they crashed moderately frequently. We finished the campaign. It was not terribly long, we had fun moments and there really were some great sequences. Should I have said something? I didn’t want to rain on his parade, and he never asked for feedback. We have not really played much since! Should I have pulled him aside and told him the pacing was bad? I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and potentially discourage future DMing. Please punish me if I was too cowardly, or punish the new DM if you think players should get to roll more than 5 times in a 3 hours session. Thank you.

Dearest and most benevolent judges of the Crit and Rake?? I humbly ask for your judgment on the case of the Darling Dashed of all Opportunities to Attack. I (Bard) am playing a game with Druid, Barbarian, Rogue, with my beloved darling boyfriend as the DM. Some important backstory: Druid, DM, and myself play a game where Druid DMs and my boyfriend is always debating and questioning Druid to see if he can get away with INSANE things (always so lighthearted and fun) In the game my boyfriend is DMing, we were in a crypt with a cell, that had a skeleton in it. This skeleton grabbed an NPC, and I was up in the initiative. I said, “I am going to try to stick my rapier through the bars of the cell and stab this guy!” *it is here that it is important to note that we are using Foundry, a VTT that will sometimes give us technical issues, but is so cool and fun* So, I roll my virtual dice to attack, and Foundry will not allow me to attack because there’s a wall in the way. Fair enough, I move closer to where the cell door is, and I try to attack again, Foundry gives the same error message. I ask, “can I not attack through the cell door?” The DM, my lovely boyfriend, doesn’t really say anything. Meanwhile the party suggests I try moving one more time, so I do. I try to attack, and you guessed it, an the same error popped up. I chalk it up to maybe the NPC is in the way, so I decide to use my action to pull the NPC from the skeleton’s grasp. I succeed, and am able to move directly up to the cell door, where I use my offhand attack to try to stab through the bars of the cell door. Foundry gives me the same error message, not allowing me to attack, and I say, “Okay, I guess we can’t attack through the cell door” and I end my turn. Eventually the skeleton’s turn comes, and the DM, the love of my life, says, “okay, the skeleton is going to try to stab you through the cell door” Judges, when I tell you my jaw dropped. I asked, “can he do that??” and my boyfriend said that “i gave up too quickly” and that “i didn’t ask him if i could attack through the door” I was a bit upset, but was going to let it go, but Bard, who DMs for my boyfriend and I encourages me to litigate a bit, and try to get at least one free attack on the skeleton. So I do, I explain my side, and my boyfriend was simply not having it. I gave up too quickly, and I never asked him if I could. Judges, I would argue that me trying to attack 4 times, receiving an error message that I could not attack, and then trying to clarify if I’m actually unable to attack through the bars of a cell door, or if the VTT was just being difficult, was not giving up too quickly, and was if not directly asking, indirectly asking if I could attack through the door. I await your judgement humbly, asking that if you rule against me the punishment be fair and just, and if you rule against against my darling boyfriend DM that the punishment be mild. I want to say we had a lovely rest of the session, and I love playing with these guys :)

I come to Dice Christ not for salvation, but guidance. I have been running a game in Theros for a little over 4 years. In that time, there has been a consistent group of players at the table, with others joining us and leaving when they have gotten jobs outside of the state. This happened a few months ago when a friend moved. A few players asked if I would be reaching out to anyone else to join and making suggestions. I didn't rush to invite someone, but while hanging out, I asked one of my player's girlfriend if she was interested. Some time passed and eventually she confirmed she'd like to join. We talked about the character and after a few days passed and she responded mentioning she was talking to another player's girlfriend about THEIR characters and how they would fit in the story. I was a bit thrown, as I did not invite her as she has never played D&D and the party was at lv 9, which seemed a bit much for someone new. I didn't want to say no as they were already talking about it and characters and wasn't looking to create an issue amongst friends. In talking with others, the players they are dating didn't know about the additional invite and others were thrown by two new people joining and making it a party of 7 players. I don't want to cause a rift between people, but planning for two more people is a lot on my end and I'm worried about our normally difficult comabt being too much or simplifying things and making things boring. I ask that Dice Christ guide me in a time I am lost.

Hello honorable Judges and that other guy who reads these. I recently started DMing a homebrew campaign for my wife and our friends. My wife recently tried to deceive the in game wife of another PC that "treason" wasn't a bad thing to be wanted for. When she made the check, I told her it would be insanely hard to convince a 200+ years old dwarf that treason has changed meanings. The DC 30 check was rolled and she came up with a 29. I then made the NPC call bullshit on her character. My wife says I was in the wrong for making the check so high... I say she was in the wrong for the least creative decision making/problem solving attempt. Can you help put to rest this little argument?

To the honorable and sensual judges, and the bailiff with a humiliation kink: I present to you the case of unnecessary information. In a session one for a campaign years ago, one of the characters (a male half elf paladin) asked to flirt with a male guard to distract them so we could sneak past. The dm then launched into his games lore that half elves could not reproduce because they were like mules, the biproduct of two different species. No one said anything and the paladin just asked the same question again. The dm let them role but seemed uncomfortable with the role playing aspect of the scene and mostly skipped past it. My question is: were we the players right to be weirded out or was that somehow relevant information to the paladins request? Additional testimony: there was never a second session and I am now no contact with everyone but one other player from that party. Also the dm was my brother.

May it please the Bountiful Bishops of Dice Christ and also Junior Choir Boy Jake; I am a man cursed by some sort of Dice Demon, and I need a blessing from Dice Christ to save my eternal dice soul (and also my dice rolls). I am known in my wider gaming group for having some incredibly unlucky rolls; in a recent session, I rolled 3 nat 1s in 5 rolls (4 attacks, and 1 desperate test of a new die). I have tried multiple methods to fix this; I have rolled on DND beyond, discord, and with multiple sets of dice, some of which I made myself. I even fostered some dice with a fellow player in an attempt to purify them. None of these attempts worked. In fact, the fostered die immediately betrayed me with a nat 1 the first roll back. The nat ones are usually very funny, but I'd like to succeed at least sometimes. I beg of you, save me from this curse so I can actually accomplish something in my games.

To the most exalted justices and the most eviscerated bailiff, I appear in court today to advocate pro bono on behalf of another in desperate need of justice. My friend's boyfriend's sister's boyfriend struck up a conversation about dnd (which he had never played before) with someone at the gym and was immediately invited to join their existing game. In their first session, the DM looked visibly upset after Boyfriend introduced his character and ended up killing him mid session, saying afterward that they hated the character and instructing him to make his next character a certain class. Boyfriend kept playing with them, but recently the DM asked if they could play on Wednesday instead of Saturday. Boyfriend said that would work for him better anyway, and after being questioned by the DM said it was because he had a conflict that Saturday. The DM decided that it was unacceptable that he would want to prioritize real life, cursed his cat, kicked him out of the group, and blocked him. This happened, mind you, after a recent session where they didn't even start playing for hours after the start time because some of them were playing Magic the Gathering instead. Your Honors, I seek justice for this innocent new player banished from the fold just as quickly as he was welcomed to it.

No intro straight to the meat you dungeon dwellers, I play alot of Magic The gathering with my friends. I know, it’s cringe, but I got two of my college best friends into it about 6 months ago and we picked up a 40 something year old in the last months and adopted him into a playgroup. Everything has been amazing until this last week. My buddy came over for our weekly game with a LAND HATE deck. A player barely getting into the competitive side of this game showed up with a brackett 3 land gate deck with game changers, and supreme crit, I’m stumped !! He loves playing the deck and I don’t really care past “oh damn well that sucks “ but my other two players aren’t as big of fans. I relinquish the rest of my time so baliff Jake can explain to the podcast what a Bracket 3 Land Hate deck means.

May it please the court, I present a question about how to interpret a players' description of their PC actions to correspond to specific mechanics. About a decade ago, when I was brand new to RPGs (and especially to D&D), I was playing in a campaign with three experienced players and a very crunchy DM. We were in the last throws of a battle with a boss monster, in a magical workshop with lots of traps and hazards including an imprisoned tornado occupying a space under a ledge. I let my companions take lead for most of the battle because I was wildly out of my depth and didn't want to mess anything up. But at one point the monster was maneuvered close-ish to the ledge and I saw an opening. I used my total movement to get as close as I could, which was one square diagonal to the ledge, and described what I wanted to do - "I want to push him over the ledge, into the tornado". The DM asked "you want to shove him?" and I agreed because it sounded close to what I was picturing in my head. We did the opposed strength check and I won, hooray! But then the DM informed me that "shove" is a mechanic that does not allow diagonal movement, only movement directly away from the PC, and the best I could get was to knock the monster prone or 5 feet closer to the ledge - but then the monster would just immediately move their next turn. When I asked to do something different as my action because that wasn't what I was trying to achieve, the DM refused saying I had taken my action and it was my responsibility to understand the rules. I was humiliated and spent the rest of the battle (and really, the rest of the campaign) hugging the walls, dealing out buffs and generally trying to stay out of the way. So I ask the Supreme Crit Justices: what is the DM's responsibility to clarify when a player is invoking a specific mechanic vs. describing the actions as seen by the character, and then helping the player to determine what mechanic best fits that description?

Dear Gods of the Dice and Lowly Lowly Lowly Lowly Jake, I present you the case, of The 15 Year Old Wizard. Not only did this wizard once blow me up with a fire ball whenever I was on death saves, but when we got to our BBG which was a giant purple dragon, he put two bags of holding together and proceeded to blow it up whenever we all wanted to fight. Our DM ended up rewinding it, allowing us to actually fight like the adventures we had spent two YEARS OF OUR LIFE BECOMING, and he got mad and left the table saying he “already won and we were being weird.” Were we all wrong to be annoyed by this child or should we have shoved him into a bag of holding? Please let me know!

To the Ultimate Supreme Crit Justices, and the Baliff, I think their name is Tina, I bring the case of the one shot catapult. I am a long term player and DM (over 5 years) and I'm playing with a new DM and two new players (I'm a player in this campaign). The DM asks me regularly for advice, as he is new to the game and I have more experience. One of the new players (Banjo the tree frog wizard) was attempting to make ammo for the catapult spell by having the artificer make essentially shrapnel rounds that would burst into 6 projectiles upon impact. The problem was, he was trying to calculate the damage as 3D8 for each piece. This would make the damage 18D8 for a first level spell, and up to 66D8 damage for a 9th level spell. I argued that it would not splinter and split that damage, to which he brought up ballistic rounds for a firearm. I argued that the catapult spell propels something 90 ft in 6 seconds, or about 10 miles per hour, which wouldn't be fast enough to do the same kind of damage. His argument was that I was crushing his creativity and couldn't compete with my damage so was feeling left out in combat (I am a lvl 3 rogue and level 7 gunslinger inspired by deadeye). Am I wrong to get involved and save my new DM from setting a precedent that this was OK, or should I have just stayed out of it and let Banjo have his nuke? I humbly await your almighty wisdom and judgment.

To the honourable Crit and their shit farmer peasant boy bailiff Joke: I present to you the case of the Icebound Grandson. A year ago, I joined a level 5 PvP bracket style tournament in a discord server with my friend. My friend played the carefree sorcerer/tempest cleric grandson to my uptight wizard grandma. We had a lot of fun with the disappointed Matriarch/clueless grandson dynamic and got a few laughs from the spectators. The issue is this: our opponents cast Rime's binding ice on my grandson and reduced him to 0 hp. As a spring Eladrin, I fae-stepped him away and healed him with a potion to bring him back up. I think that since my grandson has been teleported from the area, he should no longer have ice clinging to him to immobilise him. However, our DM ruled that since the wording of the spell specified that the ice formations occupied the area, the ice would still bind my grandson and he had to use a precious action to free himself. I would go so far as to say that this ruling lost us the battle. Was the DM's stringent ruling correct or are we sentenced to playing out this drama at the family dinners? I humbly await your judgement

Leaders of the church of dice christ, I come to you with a tale of redemption. My fiancée and I got together in 2018. She played d&d weekly with her freshman hallmates and for all of three years I relentlessly teased her, calling her a nerd for playing d&d. She told me I'd like it but I told her there was no way. Flash forward to a road trip in 2021. She made me listen to C1:E1 of naddpod. I was hooked, dragon pussy and all. Now I play d&d weekly with her and her freshman hallmates and have even pulled groups together to play in other campaigns. We are always caught up on naddpod and brainstorming our next characters together. The day after I proposed, my first roll was a nat 20. I know that I have blasphemed against the church of dice christ but now I take on my penance as a missionary for the church and will go where you point me. I am even prepared for a pelted croissant. I renounce my heretical ways and believe that hitching my metaphorical wagon to a dice christ believer is the best thing I've ever done.

Dear High Priests Murphy, Tanner, Axford, and also hello to Jakon Bourne, I have a need for Dice Christ guidance. I'm a frequent DM in two groups, one of which is for some coworkers. I ran a 10 month campaign for them a couple years ago, and then ceded DM responsibilities to one of the players, who has wanted to DM an idea he came up with 15 years ago, but never had the chance until meeting us. High priests, I hate to say, I've nearly sent him to D&D court multiple times over the past two years for nearly killing our table's enjoyment of the game. So, the other players and I are planning to forcibly reinstall me as the DM of this group. However, Dice Christ has just given me a vision. I had a dream where I was running a session for my other D&D group, which is made up of med school friends and has been active since 2020. During the session, one of my players began to role play as Jens Lindelle, and began offering his own DM-style rulings. I became irate, asking him why he would dare do such a thing. He said something about him being "a Rachel and you're a Joey at best" and informed he was taking over the game by force, in a somewhat Taruk-esque manner. I appealed to the table, and they all agreed with Jens 2.0, saying that they had just been "humoring" me for the past 5 years and did not actually like how I run games. I became very upset and said some things I regret before waking up in a cold sweat. I ask, did Dice Christ bless me with this vision of my own campaign getting taken from me to warn me against the sin of crushing this newer DM's dreams? Or is this DM an agent of the Dice Devil, and perhaps this was a false vision given by the Dice Devil in an attempt to protect their disappointing D&D? I await your guidance on this serious issue. - Chris

To the honorable and well fit and also sexy judges, and that little freaky freak rat man from the sewers (Squeak for us). I bring a confession. I prostrate myself and ask for forgiveness. I am the DM for a 6 year long campaign. We've had our highs, we've had our lows. However. Just as we were about to start our final arc, I moved. To Alaska. In the middle of nowhere. My players have been very courteous about the move but I can tell they are dissapointed. May dice Christ forgive me for my sin of not being able to handle the follow through of a 6 year long campaign

I stand before the Deacons of Dice to say I hecked up. So about a year back, I joined a campaign that had been running for a while. This was my first real time playing DND and they were already in the late game. Everyone was like 14-15. I joined as a level 11 storm sorcerer. This was a few levels behind the party, but I kind of leveled quickly to catch up. Anyway, fast forward to this past month. My guy finally reached level 17 which, as those who have played sorcerers know, is the level you unlock another metamagic. I was talking it through with a friend and trying to figure out which metamagic to take so he was like, "which ones do you already have?" So I told him and he was like "oh great. You've already picked your fourth one." And I was like. Yeah, but I unlock my fifth one now. Right? .... Right? Turns out I had been playing this entire time with an extra metamagic. I was only supposed to have three but I messed up when making the character and somehow thought I was supposed to have four. It's technically resolved itself, since I'm just not taking a new meta at level 17, but I feel like I've been cheating this whole time. Like, I can't even play it off by saying "well. It's fine. It's not like I really used all four." But no. I used all four A Lot. I was constantly having to burn spell slots for more SP for more Metamagics. orz

To the honorable supreme crit - the comedic heavyweights Justice Assford, SurfNMurph, and Tanney…… and Jake. I bring you the case of falling damage in water and the water walking spell. Where this begins - My wonderful players had an epic battle against mechanical dragon. One player cast water walking on the entire team pre battle. During battle, another one of them decided to mount the dragon because they’re a melee fighter and naturally wanted to get up in the dragons business. Well, the dragon flung him off, and since the battle was on the coast of a lake, he asked if he could aim for the water, to which I (the DM) said sure - make me a Dex check. He succeeded and promptly landed in the water. I ruled that hitting water from 100+ ft would be equivalent to hitting land, but he argued since he had water walking, he should at least take half damage because the spell would attempt to keep him on the surface of the water. Reading the spell, it says “move across any liquid surface as if it were harmless ground”, so I ruled that landing on the water would react like landing on the ground. This player almost died from drowning (he was stunned) but ultimately ended up barely surviving. My table still argues that the water walking should’ve reduced the amount damage he took. Honorable Judges - please settle this one and for all.

Dice Christ Take the Wheel, for I have sinned. I have DM'd for a campaign for the past 5 years. And I fudge rolls. I only do it when the character deserves a huge win or is trying to pull off something cool. But the last time we played, our Rogue went into a Vampire's lair alone and got caught at the dead-end on the other side of the exit. Nearly a dozen spawn came rushing at him, clogging the pathways to his escape. It was a hard fight to get through the crowd, so I fudged a little. I let him get through a few more vampires than I should have, just enough that he had a chance to get out but still could easily fail. But then my Wizard said, "if the Rogue gets out of this, you're going too easy on us, DM." And I couldn't let that stand. Not because he was wrong or rude, but because I was called out and it was embarrassing. So I stopped fudging. And the Rogue died. Thou Holiest, we're almost at the end of the campaign. I didn't want my player to lose a character that he's been playing with for five years to die alone, ripped apart by vampires on the cold stone floor. Especially not one session after he was accepted by his family and took his late father's title as Lord of his ancestral House. I know that fudging is wrong, but should my Rogue have to die for my sins? I lay myself at your little toesies, at your mercy.

Dear First Team All-Pro Surpreme Crit Justices and that Waterboy Baliff Jarf, I come to you with a classic tale of DM antics gone wrong (Murph cover your ears). About a year ago I was prepping an Autumn Festival session and was admittedly in a wacky mood. Beyond the normal festival games, I created an NPC who would polymorph PCs into toads for a little harmless fun. As a secret option at the festival I hid a small toad sized hole, which when entered the PC would come upon a sacred seance with tiny toads in witches hats surrounding a pentagram. Said PC would be greeted as the chosen toad-brother or sister whose arrival was fore-toad by Toadstradamus. After a ritual the PC gained a leaping ability and the sworn allegiance of all evil toads. Here's the issue...before all this I mistakenly made the polymorphing NPC a shapeshifting toad, so naturally they swore allegiance to my chosen PC and travels in her pocket. Now my PC has near-unlimited access to toad polymorphs and has used them to get other players out of sticky situations by polymorphing them and tucking them in her pocket. She is amassing a small toad army and I fear there's no turning back. Please help.

If it please the court and ruffle the bailiff’s feathers; I present the case of the ruined boss fight. I played a pathfinder adventure meant to introduce new players to the game with a very experienced DM. I knew I was not going to be of much use in combat, as I didn’t understand the rules and synergies. So, instead, I created a friendly goblin bard with high charisma so I could potentially lead the way when it came to getting NPC’s to share information they might have otherwise withheld. Justices, it worked too well. I gathered a great deal of information about the person the townsfolk blamed for their situation and when we encountered the BBEG, it was revealed that she was that person’s daughter, seeking revenge on the town that had killed her mother. I threw a Hail Mary. I explained to the BBEG that I knew that though the populace blamed her mother for the problem, she selflessly continued to try to solve it right up until the day they executed her. I expressed my belief that revenge would be the last thing she wanted. The DM called for a persuasion roll. I crit… The BBEG laid down their weapons and tearfully revealed what needed to be done to stop the plan she had put into motion. My other party members were all super psyched for a bitchin’ boss battle. Instead, they got Nilbog the Goblin’s solo Therapy Hour. I ask you, did I beef it by trying to do too much empathy? Or did the DM honor the dice maybe a little too hard?

I write to the court not asking for a ruling but for advice. My college friends showed an interest in playing dnd and asked me to run a game for them. As a semi-new dm, I decided to do an adapted version of Moonstone from campaign 1 since I’ve listened to the Trinyvale one-shot so many times. My thought was that even if they behave like the triplets, I could get them to answer at least one call to adventure. We ran the first session and everything was fine. My problem is that one of my players has expressed interest in keeping Denny around, bringing him to the swamp while they look for the green teens, and maybe sleeping with him. I feel like I did a good job painting the full picture of who Denny is to the players, but I’m scared they’re going to ignore the obvious. I can’t really discourage their shenanigans too much because I’ve allowed for a canonical Corpus Christi, Texas, to exist in the world. Justices, how can I keep Denny out of the adventure? I don’t care about the romance, but I just don’t really want a DM pc in the party… especially not Denny.

Hello to the authentic, brilliant, and charming Justices Axford and Tanner, and to the awe-inspiring, brave, and cunning Bailiff Jake Hurwitz. Oh, and that fourth guy, Bradley Munchy, I guess. I present to you, the case of the unnoticed stolen Nat20. This case stems from a moment in an online game when I was sparring with an NPC who viewed my Dragonborn barbarian as his better, but, mechanically he was much stronger than me (To note, I had a +2 in STR, and was level 3, and this character had 2 attacks). During said spar, I was missing most of my attacks when, low and behold, I finally rolled a Nat20! I was elated! I finally got a hit in, and a crit to boot! But then, our party sorcerer cast silvery barbs, and, while I still hit, the sting of losing a Nat20 still hurt my pride. But this is not where my issue lies. My issue lies in that, later, when I role played having noticed the sorcerer cast the spell on me, so that losing my Nat20 wouldn't go in vain, and there could be a story beat about it later, the DM claimed I hadn't noticed it! I protested, saying that she hadn't casted it secretly, nor did she use subtle spell. The DM then made me retroactively roll to notice the spell be cast on me, and of course I failed, leaving my Nat20 to be absolutely useless, combat- or story-wise. Was I wrong to think my character would have noticed a flash of silvery sparkles, and that it could be a good bonding moment later to reconcile over the slight PvP? Or is my DM correct that the spell was cast discreetly and my barbarian was just a dunce in the heat of combat, leaving the Nat20 wasted? I humbly await your verdict, and if I am found guilty, am ready to accept my punishment.

(Update and new challenge) Justices I have returned with a follow up to the failed campaign case and a new challenge. Our new party came across a group of rebels (named after the previous adventuring party) fighting against the previous big bad. As one player had said they had to leave the campaign because they didn’t have time for it anymore. I narrated how they decided to leave and help lead this rebel group. However when next session they rolled around they returned, saying they actually did wanna stay and did have time to play and were excited to keep playing the character now they had a group working for them. Justices, was I right for telling them they would need to roll a new character or give up the rebel group if they wanted to return. The table is heated and ready for your judgment.

To the most beneficent and holy Pontiffs of the Church of Dice Christ. I come seeking Last Rites to be given to a campaign lost just before it's zenith. My group had a 2 year run of mostly weekly session playing 1st to 17th levels journeying through the realm of Darthon and fighting the evil henchthings of a malevolent Outsider. Everything was going well but a new career happened, a new baby happened, two of the players have now divorced and one of the divorcees is now engaged to a different player in the same group. Suffice to say the vibes for getting the group back together for the climactic battle with the Outsider themselves are well and truly dead. Since then I have found myself blocked from the Creative Spark and believer that Dice Christ himself won't let me know the joys of a new campaign until this one is properly laid to rest I come on bended knees begging for your spiritual stewardship of this campaigns soul to be lifted to that realm of Lost Ideas and given a proper burial so that I may again create anew with another group of rowdy rascals. Thank you

May the Saints of Dice Christ find it in their hearts to forgive me for my mortal sins. And Jake can forgive me too if he wants. My group is playing Curse of Strahd currently (twinning) and my brother is one of my party members. He has DM'd for CoS before, but despite that decided to take the lead on investigating Death House. So I, in my moment of frustration at his behavior… cursed his dice. The issue is, now that we've talked and resolved everything (he's taking more help actions) his dice are still cursed. Please remove his curse, or if you see fit, place it on me. I lay forth the humblest of apologies; sorry, David. May Dice Christ forgive me, Amen.

CONFESSIONAL: I have a confession. My soul is soaked in shame and it needs the power washer of Dice Christ's forgiveness. But as the sin is still happening with no end in sight, I don't think I can ever be cleansed. I'm just hoping our Savior's favorite members of the clergy can put in a good word. One of my players is a fey, seafaring merchant. The player loves pirates, boats, etc, she even took a vacation where she crewed on an old timey boat. So I wanted to make sure I had a cool mechanic for the trade routes she wanted to set up between the feywild and the material plane. I had her meet promising traders and make contracts with them that were then attached to a CHA check. Did I know how the contracts or rolled numbers translated into gameplay or routes or whatever? No. Of course not. But I pretended I did. And I had plenty of time to figure out a very cool mechanic. Now this game started before COVID, then took a hiatus during COVID. Cut to it only starting up again last last year. Surely I could have come up with something magnificent in that time. But I didn't. The DnD forums and Reddit were useless when I asked for help. And you won't believe this, but a person who gets themselves into this mess is also bad at parsing walls of homebrew text. So far I've kept her busy with shopping, love interests, and murdering her parents, but soon things will settle and I will still not have figured out what to do with her contracts and no good excuse. I can only end my ever compounding sin by faking my death. But before I dig up the body of someone that can pass for me, I wanted to make a plea for forgiveness.

To Jim and the Justices, may I present the case of “prolonging my table’s two-month-long D&D drought vs attempting to play during my colonoscopy prep.” (Yeah, I said it. Thank goodness I zoom-in and the actual table is in my best friend’s house on the other side of the state). Judges, Jeff, I’m a 41 year-old dice addict in a serious pickle. My table hasn’t played for actual months due to scheduling constraints and I’m fiending for an RP dice fix like a Labrador who smelled something *possibly* edible. When our DM texted the group to start playing again I had to chime in and say I sadly could not make it to the first session in months because I’m doing colonoscopy prep. Without skipping a beat, our DM said “let’s just plan on next week, then” before waiting until the rest of the group could chime in as well to say yay or nay. This goes against our rule of call-outs where we only cancel or postpone if two or more people can’t play. So I ask, was our DM right to just postpone immediately on my behalf without input from the table, or should I insist we play to be fair to everyone even if I have to mute myself constantly and play from the bathroom?

To the fit judges and floppy baliff Juice , I give you the case of the parent trap. I DM an online campaign with my partner and 2 other friends. I had an encounter where a necromancer had captured one of my PCs parents in 2 cages hanging over a cliff. The Necromancer instructed the players they must choose which parent to kill and which to save, any funny business or not picking a parent after 1 minute would result in both falling to their deaths... starting now. I then started the clock and after 1 real world minute, no choice was made and I described both cages being cut and falling to their death. My partner argued we should have rolled initative or i should given more of a warning but I stand by my decision saying that it would have taken away some of the shock value and stakes. I leave it up to you judges, was I right in using real time or should I have given the players more leeway? I bow my head and await the verdict

To the Gold Medalists in When-Did-This-Come-Out Justices and the Semi-Pro Bailiff Jake, I present the case of the D&DUI: Early in my now 5-year campaign, as a first-time DM, I handed out a Decanter of Endless Water. Over time, I let the players "upgrade" it in different ways. It was too late before I realized they now had a Decanter of Endless Booze that was filled an Elven wine that healed you. Through the muskiest of DM sweats, I tried balancing it by adding a Con Save to avoid "drunkenness" (poisoned + 1 exhaustion), scaling with the amount healed. Punishing enough, right? Wrong. Judges, my players are always drunk. They pregame every fight with keg stands of their decanter to top off their HP and regularly teeter on the edge of death—not from enemies, but from alcohol poisoning through increasing levels of exhaustion. One nearly died mid-fight by getting 6 levels of exhaustion, saved only by bardic inspiration. So, Judges: Was I wrong to hand them the decanter? Should I have cracked down on their spiraling upgrades? Or should I just let them drink themselves to death while my BBEG stands there like their designated driver?

To the esteemed babes and the lowly dude: I present the case of the insane player and whether I'm being too accommodating. I've been DMing a group of various players for a couple of years, first a Mortal Kombat themed homebrew 5e campaign and most recently a mostly straight 5e text-based "future fantasy" with magic technology, like a less dystopian and therefore less absolutely sick Final Fantasy 6. The problem is this: one of my players has insane character ideas that are always just "something random". First he was Bryson Rickard Nyte, aka Brick Knight. He threw bricks. I went along with it. Next, he proposed Alex Murphy, a warforged--RoboCop. I shut that down immediately. Next, I allowed him to play Dr. Bruce Banting, a human barbarian whose rage just turned him green for flavour. The Incredible Hulk died in a volcano without death saves due to ignoring a countdown timer, and now he's playing an old wizard whose identity was vaguely "Ghost Knight" for like 8 months. Folks, he's an old grizzled Phantom Ranger from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers who lost his memory. I don't know that a crime has been committed, and people mostly think it's funny though I've gotten a couple of complaints about him making silliness out of dire moments. I talked with him one time about it 2 months ago, he said he'd change, and then he just kinda left us on read when we tried to advance the story further. I could continue without his participation, but babes and dude, is that the right move? Have I done things wrong? I await your judgement.

Dear our most honorable judges and their sidekick bailiff, I present to you the case of a spell of undo consquence and despair. During a campaign a pc had a missing fiancé that was spotted in a city a week's journey north. On our first day of travel that pc said they were constantly looking for their missing love so dm had them roll a perception check. After a bad roll, dm said they spotted the fiancé walking into the woods. Given our intel, i didn't believe this but rather than roll the same check myself I cast animal messenger to see if it lead north or into the woods. We gave the messenger a very detailed description* including long haired, dark blue tiefling with antler horns. The dm had the messenger lead us to a human solider wearing a helmet with antler horns who arrested us on the spot because magic is outlawed there. This severely derailed our quest and later the campaign ended abruptly without ever having found the fiancé. This felt like an unfair consequence for a leveled spell because the solider was so different from the description, but I didn't speak up at the time. Judges, should I have fought back on this or was it within the dms creative rights? I await your judgement on behalf of my darling druid genasi who wanted to be in a throuple with this couple *note: my pc had never met the finance and was using the other pc's description

To the honorable justices and beautiful bailiff, I submit the case of the Stonefaced Replacement (with a side of GM Confession) More than a decade ago, I GM'd for the first time (pathfinder 1e, Kingmaker adventure path). The players were fairly new too. Our rogue took the story feat "Nemesis," which grants the PC bonuses in trade for a dedicated nemesis coming out of the woodwork to destroy all they stand for; perfect for kingdom building! My confession is that, in my weakness as a fledgling GM, I introduced this nemesis through the medium of an assassin in the night. I didn't assassinate the PC who just gained a nemesis, instead he slew the Summoner PC! The whole table had long agreed the summoner was OP, but it was still the wrong way to go about it. He barely had any chance to survive a coup de grace in his sleep, and died to the assassin's cursed blade. The player was sad to see the summoner go, but he was excited to bring in his new (more balanced) PC; this is where the case comes in. I introduced his character to the party by having them all come across a wagon of travelers who'd all been killed by a notorious wild beast in the area, and the new Inquisitor was already on scene investigating. The party asked him about himself, and he was stonefacedly silent. They asked him if he killed these people, and he just stared and said nothing in an attempt to be strong, silent, and intimidating. The rogue stepped up and demanded to know what was going on, saying that they would have to assume the worst if he didn't at least say something like "No I found them like this and we can follow these tracks to the culprit," and still he stuck to the mysterious demeanor. The rest of the party rolled initiative and attacked, killing him in a 1v5 battle. The summoner/inquisitor player left the campaign after that. I already regret my part in this and wish I'd shut it down, but like... Was the rogue right to be so suspicious? Was the Inquisitor right to play strong and silent even past the point of clear warning? This has bugged me for 13 years.

To the esteemed Justices and the baby bailiff, During my first session years ago, my friends and I played the Essential Kit campaign Dragon of Icespire Peak. Since then they’ve used the same characters (except the OG fighter) that have jumped through different universes in our own “homebrew universe” (which they are level 15 now) Here’s the problem, we recently got back IRL and we were drinking one night and one buddy the Gnome Rogue admits an egregious sin. During the Icespire Peak campaign he faked a death saving throw to pass what would have been his death!!! I as the DM am working on a time travel side quest that has the party go to that point to stabilize the would be dead Gnome rogue. The party doesn’t know this yet but while I get closer to running this. The party is divided on whether or not to Retcon his death, having the Gnome be “his son” or “clone” all along. The Gnome is heavily against this saying it was just an early mistake. Other players now saying he has cheated the whole campaign and one player (my Human Fighter) that has had a PC death saying they should be able to bring him back. Do I allow this retcon based on party votes? should i offer the other PC the same courtesy of a side quest to bring them back? Do I just say it was a mistake and be just be honest? I await your HOLY JUDGEMENT! Much love,

To the Honorable and extremely attractive Judges, and that guy who played Ace in Ace and Jocelyn: I present to you the Case of the Omnipotent Interloper. Several years ago in my college days, I was part of a DnD game with some friends. It was our first session, and we were all very excited for the campaign. The problem arose when the DM brought his non-player girlfriend to the game, and said she was just there to "observe". The problem is, I knew this girlfriend very well by this point, and I knew out the gates that she was going to do far more than just "observe". I told her up front that, while she could be part of the discussion between roleplaying, she was not a part of the game since she did not have a character to play, and thus could not contribute to in-game discussions. She said she understood. Evidently (and predictably), she did not. It took her no time at all to begin adding her two cents to party discussions, saying things like "you guys should do X" or "don't forget about Y". I explained to her multiple times (admittedly a little less friendly each time) that she was not a part of the game, and that her input broke immersion and hurt the roleplay. She never learned her lesson, and the session eventually came to an end. We never continued that campaign (or ever started a new one), and I can't help but feel like it was at least partially due to the tension created by my repeated scolding of the DM's girlfriend. Nobody else, including the DM, ever said anything to her about it, but that is most likely because most of that friend group were introverts who likely did not want to rock the boat . We never spoke about the session again, but I am confident that my fellow players felt the same way that I did about her transgressions. Judges, was I right for calling out my DM's intrusive girlfriend while admittedly bringing some negative vibes from past interactions with her to the table, or should I have allowed this omnipotent voice from the heavens to continue to speak to our party? I await your absolute judgment.

Dearest Divine Judges (church and state together forever <3) and their little whelp Jank, I come to you with a case of an unforced scheduling mishap. I’ve been playing for a few years in a weekly homebrew game I joined halfway through their story after some other people left and found the most incredible world, extremely bought in players, extremely cool lore, a dm who was eager to provide any part of the world to help with the story we all wanted to tell, even creating class specific items that level up with us, based on various story triggers or certain number of a specific kind of enemy killed etc etc. Therein lies my problem. My snake boy artificer had just discovered not only how to upgrade his item by putting a new kind of crystal battery in it from a local group, but discovered that the other battery and place of creation was in a flying golden city that never landed in the same place twice! We’d even heard rumors of it being around and I’d been very excited to go, coming up with plans to fly the four of us up if we encounter it, creating potions for the situation to do so, making it very very clear this was my plan and desire and everyone was on board! Therein struck a week where I had some sort of scheduling problem and I seemed to be the only one. That’s usually all good and I wouldn’t ask people to stop but I knew we were about to get deep into my backstory territory since we were heading to my hometown to confront my evil dad, and so I asked if everyone would maybe want to take a week off just in general cause I wouldn’t want to miss the start to my own thing. The DM responds with “well just do another small travel thing and they’ll arrive when you’re here next week no worries” and so I say okay cool! No worries! Gods, Lords, Small German Boy Bailiff, that few days of travel while I was not there for the session just so happened to be when they saw the beautiful flying golden city where my artifact was created, soaring high above us, yet well within flying rage for a group of level 11 magic users, and instead of going up to it with my plan, or stopping the session there, or telling me about it, they simply move on and head to my hometown. I didn’t even hear about the missed battery and story and opportunity until the recap of the next session where when I asked they mostly said “yeah you weren’t here we didn’t want to do it without you.” Justices and Jonk, what should i feel about this? Am I wrong for asking the entire game to stop on my account just once or were they wrong for telling me nothing would happen and then skipping past my planned out upgrade? Any answers would be highly regarded and possibly prayed to amen thank you #bloodvape PS. For further context all of their items upgraded after getting a certain amount of kills or casting a specific number of spells and mine were all finding special story items so it always felt like an extra kick that there was not any other way for me to upgrade my item.

Honorable justices and also Jake who is also there I guess. I bring to you the twin counter-spell debacle. I have always enjoyed playing sorcerers because of all the ways you can use meta magic and a thought popped in my head. I asked several of my DM friends who then asked their DM friends. Can a sorcerer use twin spell for counter-spell? We went to the books but according to RAW we couldn’t find anything that would specifically prevent it. The only thing that we found was that twin spell cannot be used on the same target so you cannot counter-spell a counter-spell of a counter-spell. What I bring to you justices is can a sorcerer twin spell a counterspell and “call his shot” if there are multiple casters. In other words if caster A is casting a spell but you know caster B is probably going to pull some shenanigans on their turn/reaction can you target both? My friends and I had fun discussing this and (mostly) agreed “calling their shot” would be allowed as long as the sorcerer accepts that their meta-magic points would be used regardless of whether or not caster B actually casts a spell.

To the holy diviners of Dice Christ's will, and also that other guy, Will: About ten years ago, I joined a campaign in progress. It was my first time playing. To make a long story short, our cleric was out for one week, and the rest of the party got ourselves TPK'd. The DM ruled that the witches we were fighting ran off the plane with our souls bound and revival was impossible. This did not please the cleric or most of the other party. Aside from my newbie self, the party was filled with power gamers, who turned me into a weapon of their revenge. I went from a bumbling rogue to a Terminator ranger maxed with feats/abilities I barely understood, and magic items I knew for a fact I probably shouldn't have had, yet went along with. I proceeded to practically solo the DM's big set piece villian in just a few rounds. The group broke up not too long after, and I've never played again. I seek forgiveness from Dice Christ, for even as a new player I knew what was happening was unusual, both in the game and kind of as a dick move outside of the game.

To the mighty justices of the crit, towering on lofty perches far far far far above anyone else who may be there, I am in quite a “Binky” Fiasco. I DM for friends and my wonderful girlfriend. We tend to run high stakes campaigns and PC death is not unheard of. My wonderful girlfriend has informed me that if her current character is to die, she has already thought of a replacement: Gobby, a goblin monk from “a secret moon.” From what she has explained, this lil guy will be a nightmare of nut punches and silly phrases. Suffice it to say I am now terrified to potentially kill her current character off. I ask you so humbly, from so far far far below (but still above Jork) if I should be pulling punches for the sake of my sanity, or do I murder my wonderful girlfriend’s character and stare her down telling her to do her worst. We both await your judgement.

To the wise High Justices of the Supreme Crit, and their dutiful bailiff, Today, I come before the court with an unusual case, that is the Case of Jumping Down the Hole. My case is not about a specific incident, but of a pattern of behavior I have been noticing lately. I have been DMing for a group of friends for about a decade now, and have begun to notice that they have become very risk adverse when playing. In situations that I refer to as asking them to “jump down a hole”, that is asking them to take an action that they can’t immediately take back, they often dither about making any decision and will do everything in their power to learn about what the consequences of different choices might be before deciding, and even when they are successful at this, sometimes still try to avoid jumping down the hole. I have tried everything, from having NPCs bring up why they need to make a choice (I cringe internally every time I have to do this because it feels like some a new DM has to resort to) to outright having an OOC conversation with them, but they just can’t seem to get past being so risk adverse. I’m at the end of my rope here Judges, their desire to avoid any decision that might end in something potentially bad happening to them makes sessions really drag, and in my opinion at least is leading to the story I’m trying to tell with them to be very boring. Please grace me with your divine wisdom, and help me out of this situation!

To Twilight Sparkle Murph, Trixie Caldwell, Starlight Glimmer Emily and annoying dragon baby Spike Jake, I bring you the case of the non invulnerable armour. Recently when I was playing with a new group, one of my players loudly complains every time something does damage to her, citing "I've got all this armour, does it mean nothing?" I've tried to explain that it's just dice rolls and the game would be boring if she couldn't take damage, but she won't listen. She has the same complaint to effects that require a saving throw ("does my armour do nothing?) She has an armour class of 18 at level 2 which I believe is the highest it could possibly be for anyone at that level(?). I'm half tempted to ask her if she just wants to never get targeted by any monster Judges, am I doing a bad job of explaining things? Thanks you love you lots

To the honorable justices and the other one I guess, I present to you the Case of the Stolen Surprise. I was in a Campaign with my 3 older siblings, My oldest brother was the DM. I was playing a rouge and the campaign consisted of us defending a town from Gnolls. We tracked a group of raiding Gnolls back to their camp, I rolled a 20 on a stealth check and was allowed to sneak up on a guard who had a horn. I asked if I could sneak attack him. The DM had everyone roll initiative and the Gnolls rolled higher than me. On its turn it blew the horn and alerted the camp. I argued that it shouldn't have seen me because of the stealth check. He said that once intiative started we were in combat so it would see me. My two other siblings took his side so I dropped it but it still annoyed me for the rest of that encounter. We almost died fighting all of the Gnolls at once. Judges, was I robbed of my sneak attack? Or was my brother correct and once initiative starts any previous set up stops being important? I await your ruling.

To the stalwart and venerable justices and that…. Ummm…. Surely is Employed Bailiff, I’m from the lower appellate crit and am hoping for some rapid fire rulings on common small cases. I have been doing my best to stymie the flow of unnecessary cases up to your justice dice tray but I have noticed some reoccurring queries I’m hoping a quick rapid fire ruling will address. -the pearl of power. Interpretation of RAW it says it takes an action to restore a spell slot which means it would take 2 turns to be able to cast that spell (1 to restore, 1 to cast) what say you, is this true interpretation or is restoring the spell slot in line with casting a spell that same round? -help action abuse, is there even such a thing? Should the DMs whining about players collaborating via help actions shut the fuck up or is that the players being too “meta” and power gaming? (Booo) (sorry I recuse myself on this case as i have personal feelings on it) -familiars, what is the limitations to them be able to provide help actions (see above) -and lastly, how to identify the difference between a problem PC (ala Yugo) vs a lil scamp (early c1 Beverly) Thank you for your time, we in the lower crit appreciate your rulings!

To the magnanimous judges and the little, tiny bailiff, Jimothy, to which I’m apathetic to, I present the case of the BBEG romance. I was playing in a years long campaign where my party was fighting an elder demon hellbent on world domination. This demon notably had the ability to turn into a humanoid and mess with us throughout our adventures. However, throughout these interactions our party’s bard kept trying to flirt with him even when we knew he was the BBEG. This was not a problem though and actually encouraged by myself and the rest of the party, while our DM begrudgingly would dismiss anything ever happening. When it came time for the final confrontation, we decided our best course of action was for the bard to go in ahead and finally seduce the BBEG so that he’d be distracted and we could take a surprise round. Our DM was insistent this would not work but allowed our Bard to roll at disadvantage. Dice Christ smiled upon us because they rolled 2 natural 20s and the DM frustratedly narrated the seduction. Our party was so ecstatic that we broke from roleplay to celebrate, but the DM argued we took too long to move our characters and launched combat. In truth, we didn’t mind because we were so overjoyed our bullshit happened, but was our DM wrong to punish us for our celebration at Dice Christ’s benevolence. All of us, even the DM look on the event fondly, but please subject whoever is wrong to a first-class grinching.

...splendidly: I PROSTRATE MYSELF BEFORE THE COURT AND DEMAND A MORTAL JUDGEMENT! I seek justice as it was at the high crit's origin, and as befits the crime. I bring the case of Moolissa:The Non-Canonical Cow. I played with a group of friends and Bills fans I dubbed "The Buffalo Billywogs," who got into D&D from listening to NADDPOD. Love them dearly, but this crew had some bad habits. Rather than any of the players taking notes/responsibility, they previously relied on their DM to recap at the beginning of each session. This became a problem when I took the reigns as DM, and allowed the now-first-time-player, "Billy," to continue as party historian. In my first homebrew module, the party was sent on a fetch quest from prison under a powerful curse, oppa Suicide Squad style. In the first pastoral town, they defeated a cult of vegan cattle-rustlers who had been "liberating" all the livestock. Immediately after combat, the party befriended a heffer dubbed "Moolissa." Ending that session, I narrated the party bidding farewell to the animal this starving town could not spare. Imagine my surprise when, at the start of the next session, Billy read his account and included that they had taken Moolissa with them, saying "that's canon now." I clarified that they certainly had not, and the adventure carried on as planned. They spent a few days in game spelunking down into a labyrinth of ancient Dwarven ruins. The third time Billy started a session by insisting that Moolissa had been with them the whole time and always would be, I felt a call to action. I allowed them to have the cow, as they were about to enter a puzzle encounter including a series of long, narrow bridges connecting enchanted doors that teleport between one another in a black void. If you picture a Scooby-Doo door chase shot with no floor or ceiling, the scene is set. I forewarned them that the bridges were narrow and animal handling checks would be required to guide Moolissa safely. The wizard confidently and immediately rolled a classic 2, and I narrated that Moolissa slipped over the edge. It was pre-written that a character falling below the bridges would find themselves falling from the ceiling with a random chance to land on a bridge, or continue falling between them. As rolled, she fell past the party 3 times, bellowing in confusion. The cow comet flew some 120 feet before finally finding a bridge on which it exploded. The party seemed shocked into silence for a few seconds, before decrying me for killing their fun and then hastily butchering her to make commemorative jerky. So I ask the court: did I cruelly murder Moolissa and needlessly deny them a harmless pet, or was I within my rights as DM to defend the sovereignty of what is canon in my world? While the gripping subsided many months ago, this case has been nagging at me ever since. I ecstatically await the court's judgement, and accept whatever capital punishment it "meats" out. PS: I recorded these sessions and would be happy to answer inquiries for further information, or defend myself from likely counter suits as appropriate

To the people who hate on jake our hero i used to play dnd alot but in the past year i have only played my current table plays on a day that i cant play but my old table is in the middle of a campeihn (i spelled it wrong on purpose) so ive bean waiting for an oppuertunity to join a new table so please bless me handsome balof jake and the jake haters buhbye

Is it a sin to lay off the gas? I roll like shit. Because of my proclivity for bad rolls I balance my combat around it. It has always been a thing in my games and in our pre session ritual of rolling 5d20 I rolled a nine total so I assumed it would be a good combat for my players. I. Was. Wrong. I rolled averagely and things got dire. I feared a TPK in a moment that was supposed to be scary but not lethal.fearing for my players I started to play the baddies dumb and less focused. Splitting damage and pealing off to complete other objectives, “forgetting” abilities and generally being stupid. Because of this and a few clutch rolls from my party they were able to just barely pull it out. After the game I was talking to one of them and though relieved that her character didn’t die she knew me well enough to know I threw the fight and that my average rolls were the problem in the balance. I ask the church is it wrong to throw a fight with bad tactics and should I learn to fear average rolls? I lay judgment at the feet of dice christ and their holy clergy.

To the Honorable Judges Murphy, Tanner, and Afford, and… uh… Balif John? Your honors, I come before you not as a mere mortal, but as a victim of narrative injustice. This is The Case of the Misnaming Dragonborn. I play in a campaign where your race and stats are random due to rolls and you're reincarnated from our world to dnd. Here is Carl: My purple dragonborn cleric with bad luck, worse dice, and the shortest life expectancy this side of a kobold in a wizard’s duel. Carl met an early grave, as is tradition for level 1s. And so, from the ashes of Carl’s tragic nat 1s, rose Randy — a new hero. A fighter. A fresh start. New stats. New class. New soul. But alas… not a new race. Dragonborn again. As if fate herself couldn’t let me escape Carl’s legacy. Here lies the tragedy: For nearly a year, I have walked the path of Randy. I have fought, bled, and roleplayed admirably in his scaled boots. And yet… my party those I trusted most still call me Carl. Not in passing. No, Your Honors. As a habit. A casual disregard for Randy’s existence. Every time they call me "Carl," another part of Randy dies inside. And while I correct them, they laugh. Tell me, your Honors — do all humans look the same to you? Are all elves interchangeable? Is this racial profiling?! Randy deserves better. And now I stand before you with a plea. A crossroads. Should I just embrace this mockery, give in to the peer pressure, and change my name back to Carl — thereby erasing poor Randy’s identity forever… or continue this struggle to be recognized for who I truly am, not who I once was? Your Honors, I am tired. Randy is tired. Even Carl’s ghost is tired of being misattributed. All I seek is justice… or at least a ruling. Sincerely, Randy "Definitely Not Carl" the Dragonborn Fighter

Dear illustrious justices and the bailiff. Today I ask the very important question, should pc's be able to use the persuasion skill on each other? In a game last year my character took a dark lord's name which lead to the dark lord being free and their realm falling apart, dooming the people. My party wanted me to undo this by using my fates card from the deck of many things. I said that my character wouldn't do this because she's vanquished a dark lord and she didn't want to lose that status. One of the other party members rolled a persuasion check against me and got a 17, he said I would then be compelled to use my card. My dm and I said persuasion checks were only for npc's. Justices I ask should the persuasion check have worked on my pc?

To the honorable Baliff Jackamo Hurwitzian, his lackeys, and the lowly janitor Byron Smurfy, I come before you begging that you pass judgement on my thieving DM. We were playing in our first campaign together, and helped a wizard simulacrum finish his now deceased, Prime Wizard’s illusion-made-real machine. Our wizard and artificer rolled really high (25+) and succeeded. They tested it on an illusion of a pile of platinum bars, then on the wizard. All worked. We ran to go get a bank account in a city a few hours away. Then the DM says the bars are disappearing with a half life of like 10, maybe 30 minutes. (But the wizard is fine). Then he has a weird little stereotypical French mustached devil pop out of our wizards watch. To Waylay us. We get to the bank and set up a deal to launder money with teller. Then the same devil shows up, pushes teller and money in the vault portal, and seals it. It’s been years, in game and real life. Money is still sealed away. Please, validate our dismay. Yes it would have been nearly a million gold, but we couldn’t have done anything with it (we were isolated in Icewind Dale). We are willing to stop teasing the dm for this if you side with him. I suspect you won’t. Thank you.

Dear dice christ, I fear I have strayed into the lands of goof and away from the road of rationality. My crime, my sin, the red in the ledger of my DMing life is called Bodega Simulator. After wrapping our first multi campaign the group I DM for we decided for the next campaign we started using the system kids on bikes. The intention was to see the highs and lows of these characters growing up in a small spooky town together. However due to the fantasy band Copperback needing an opening act, a great roll for a signing bonus after the gig, and a lucky gambling streak at an underground boxing match, the party have pooled all their funds and bought the bodega across from their school. Everything has become about the bodega. They finish school and go straight to the bodega, they employed their school friends at the bodega, they host gigs at the bodega, if they find out a clue about a monster or mystery they regroup at the bodega. There's even a Excel sheet for the bodega's finances. We've hombrewed more rules for the bodega's mechanics than there are in entirety of kids on bikes. The party now refer to the game as bodega simulator. I fear my desire to follow the fun the party is having with this will negatively affect the characters they had been developing. The necromancer witch, dumpster thief, silver tongued guitarist, and bear knuckle boxer have all taken a wild left turn into bodega owners/employees

Dear mighty Just Justices and the pretty cool bailliff Jak I submit The case of the Far Futured Fanfiction I dm for my wife and her friend, a small two party game in a fairly magical setting Not long after we started playing, my wife informed me that her friend, WF (Wife's Friend from here on) Was writing a little story of their PC in the distant future, XX years in the future as they're an elf. I was immediately a little sus of this type of thing, but after some back and forth and hearing a section of the story read aloud to me, it was a very low magic meet cute between WF's PC and a disciple, turned slow burn romance I reluctantly gave an okay, as it was small scale just her PC, and I didnt want to take personal expression away from them, a slippery slope i acknowledge The issue lies as WF has not only kept writing for the last 9 months continuously in this continuity, they also have been reading the fic to my wife, and this has resulted in her mixing up npcs, as my wife's PC is also referenced and apart of this fanfic Recently they apparently wrote a touching moment with their character's father recognizing their growth for "the first time", who I've been trying to set up for a confrontation with as their father is the reason they started the adventure. However WF was recently having irl issues with their father and a lack of communication, oof. Judges i seek collaborative story counsel, do I tell them to cool it? Do I just keep going and pretend I know nothing, grimising through my wife being my informant for what is going on and pretneding and hoping they take it as an alternative future? I plead guilty to allowing it in the first place, but I stand by the desire to want to do creative things with a character you spawned

To the formidable justices of the crit and the feeble bailiff, Jacob. I have been running Curse of Strahd, using Dragnacartas Reloaded (shout out!) for the past year. The paladin missed a few sessions and had to join the party in vallaki, so I had Ismark lend this player a horse to meet the others. They encountered wolves on the road (heavily bloodied from a fight the rest of the party won last session) that injured the horse. The paladin wanted to “mercy kill” the horse and get rations of horse meat. Later in the session someone made a joke about the Horse being Ireena’s pet and the rest of the party and I ran with it, including them casting sending to let Ismark know the horse was safe while lying to Ireena that the horse was back home. They have also been feeding Ireena meat from her horse without telling her. Now almost a year later, the party returned to the Village of Barovia where obviously Ireena and Ismark both learned of their lies. There was some very intense and dramatic role play of Ireena feeing betrayed by the party, for lying to her about not only killing the horse but Feeding It To Her. There was also a reveal that the horse was a gift from Ireena’s deceased mother, and ultimately there were almost tears at the table and our sorcerer’s Very Close Friendship with Ireena came into question. the paladin felt extremely bad for everything. I’m coming to you to ask if I should have just let this joke in passing go, without having Ireena question her trust in them or if I was right for going head first into the bit and cranking it to 1000%. (To be clear this is all in good fun and everyone did laugh after the session about it but the paladin feels So Bad)

To the Hottest, and moistest bailiff, and my favorite judges... I present the case of the Forgetful Idiot. I run a campaign with my crew and I took inspiration from the Ultrus Helm and made the Cursed Helmet where you add charges to do abilities, but make a con save at night to not get taken over. I specifically wrote down it's abilities (cause it's basically the ultrus helm) and made sure he knew what it does. 6 sessions later a bullywug npc, bingle, was making his final death save and got a 9, killing him off. The player with the helm was like, nope I add plus 2 to the roll with my helm to make it 11, but I said that's not what it does. He argued really hard and showed what he wrote down, but I KNOW that's not what it does because it's from my favorite dnd podcast. Judges, am I remembering the helmets powers wrong, should I have been more aware of his perception of his helmet, or should my player actually listen to when I say the mechanics on an item thats really important. I await your jazziest verdict!

Confession of the tarrasque and it's fatal BONK on the head: To the most esteemed Priests of the High Crit who are all equal in Church, even if some are lowely bailiffs by day. I seek forgive for sinning at the final hurdle of a 5 year campaign. It was the penultimate boss. A Persona inspired, shadow tarrasque born of the Druid's regrets and shame. It was supposed to be the culmination of her 5 year character arc. But the fight was boring! Tedious! Long! So I commited a sin. The druid ran out of spell slots and bonked the tarrasque with shillelagh. It was funny. So I lied and said the tarrasque only had 3 HP left and she killed it with a BONK. But really it had 150 odd HP left. But now I'm filled with regret. I NEVER lie about HP or dice rolls. And my players still talk about how I am a paragon of refusing to fudge. But deep down I know I'm a fraud. It was only once, but I lied hugely and I still feel bad about doing so. I hope my players hear my confession and can forgive me.

Most Noble Justices and Bayliff John, The crux of my case is this: can it be called D&D night if we don't play D&D? My table has a bi-weekly schedule to play D&D. We communicate if we need to cancel or miss, but we meet up most weeks. The problem is that we probably only actually play D&D once a month or so, sometimes less. The rest of the time we just use the time to talk, catch up, and enjoy each other's company. So if we aren't actually playing D&D on a night, can we still call it our D&D night? We have been, but may not be correct in doing so in the eyes of the court. Given there is no immediate defendant or prosecutor, the court may punish me if we have been wrong.

May it please the court, I play the party healer and in one of our recent sessions we fought and defeated a dragon however one of our party members had been swallowed and while not dead was taking damage each round. The rest of the party was working on cutting him out of the dragons stomach, whilst I opened up the dragons mouth and attempted to cast a Cure Wounds, Mass in order to help them not succumb to the crushing damage. My DM said the healing would not reach them due to the inherent magical properties of the dragon but I argued that the dragon was dead and that AoE heal spells generally work even if I don’t have line of sight and generally other barriers don’t stop it. Who was right?

To these absolute knobs, May it challenge the court and upset the power they wield. I bring you the case of "WTF High Crit, you got a problem with me?" I have written in in the past for your assistance and all you do is punish me. My players fill up a bag with bombs - my fault. My player brings and OP, roided out, charisma laden God bird to the scrub match - my fault. My players name them selves all Tyler - not only my fault - but justice Murphy says he must make an example of me and creates the first NADDPOD precedent in my name. Furthermore, Justice/ Lowly lowly lowly bailiff Axeford openly stated on record she wished to torment me. I have clearly been targeted and I demand retribution from this kangaroo court. I ask YOU NADDPOLES if this tyranny should continue. Good day. P.S. I don't even like this show. P.P.S. I will settle for Emily's 1st ugly mug, that unfortunately sounds extremely delightful

Praise be to our Lord Dice Christ! I come not as a meek penitent seeking forgiveness, lowly as a bailiff. I come soaring from the heavenly heights of evangelism, having received the holy blessing of Dice Christ myself. He has laid his eyes upon me and deemed me worthy. As a forever DM, I am always seeking to tread so carefully the line between easy combat and unbalanced encounters, more often than not someone will go down in a combat, but death in 5e is truly so rare. Which brings us to our Lord’s blessing. A job on a bounty board, the reward too high, too good to be true, for indeed, it was a carefully laid trap. My PCs paid no heed, asking no questions of the quest giver that would reveal the ploy, plunging headlong into a dark cave despite only 1 having darkvision (and I did make sure they knew this). The cleric (the intended victim of the trap from a backstory NPC that had vowed to kill her) for the first time failed to cast false life on herself prior to combat. Leving up before the session, the warlock had debated taking an invocation that would automatically bring someone up from 0 HP but chose to buff her eldritch blast. The fighter attacking with disadvantage from the dark, failed to hit on any attack in 4 rounds, which would have brought the combat to a close sooner. Believers in Dice Christ, the cleric went down, nobody healed her, the NPC took another swing for one death save fail, and it was her turn next. It was in this moment that I knew Our Lord to be true, for I had seen his works laid before me. A natural 1. The stunned silence as a PC met their end after a series of poor choices, and guided by the hand of fate. I do not revel in the demise of a PC, but I do recognize that Dice Christ was unwilling to allow this poor play to continue, he knew that punishment must be swift, and brutal, and he doled it out in a mighty way. So praise be to our humble lord and savior, may you all walk in his light

The Case of the Definition of Murder To the honorable and magnanimous justices of the Supreme Crit, and Jork the dork. I bring you the case of the definition of murder. My party of level 7 adventurers was traveling through a perilous, time-distorted Feywild adjacent forest from which escape is nearly impossible. There they encountered a caravan of survivors from many different eras, who had banded together in search of a way out despite having no shared background. Within this caravan were NPCs connected to each character’s story. The Rogue encountered the lieutenant of the most powerful information broker in the criminal underworld from his home city. After a tense exchange in thieves cant and a sharp insight check, the Rogue discerned the man was ruthlessly self interested. This lieutenant might betray or even kill others to secure his escape, but he could also prove a capable ally if kept under watch. Between sessions, the Rogue conspired with the Paladin (his friend and irl coworker) and argued that this potential threat should be eliminated preemptively. They sought my ruling, and I allowed it, warning that such an act could bring serious repercussions in game for the characters. I now find myself regretting that allowance. At the next session the Rogue and Paladin executed their plan without consulting the other characters. They approached the lieutenant in his sleep, the Paladin disarmed his Alarm spell, and with the aid of a cursed sword, the Rogue slew him where he lay. When dawn came and the deed was revealed, the Rogue summoned the caravan and pled his case. By virtue of high persuasion rolls and the reluctant backing of his unknowing and confused companions, the caravan accepted his explanation, though more for the sake of stability and hope for survival than conviction in their justification. And yet, honorable justices, some PCs and several NPCs within the story have called it murder (because it was), and I too have recorded it as murder in my recaps (because it was). In the last session the Paladin objected, insisting I cease labeling the act as such, for in his mind it was righteous and justified. Thus I submit to this court: am I bound to silence, forced to adopt the Paladin’s framing, or may I preserve the ethical law of my world and call the premeditated slaying of a sleeping man for crimes not yet committed what it is — murder? For if murder for future crimes is acceptable, then I ask leniency now for my future crime of stranding the Paladin in a pocket dimension filled angry geese and old cheese.

Dear Dice Christ. I come to you with my sins. There was a very important save my Dragon had to do. I rolled it in front of the board. None of us could see the roll so when I picked up the dice I thought it was a Nat 1. When I said that out aloud my entire table erupted into a chorus of cheers and whoops. However, the dice actually said 11. I could not bring myself to tell them the actual dice number. I prostrate myself before thee. How many lashings must I inflict upon myself? Am I worthy of salvation.

Benevolent Justices and, *clears throat*, I bring the case of the fireproof satyr. In the 51st session of my soon-to-end homebrew campaign, the party fought imperial snitch wizards on a warship. After one injured mage got pushed into the bay, he Fireball-ed the only PC in sight — my friend Jack’s satyr ranger Tumnus Spanakopita, and his wyvern mount. As a satyr, he gets Magic Resistance, so advantage on saving throws against magic. But does that mean advantage saving against Fireball? The advantage totally makes sense to me for a Flesh to Stone or Suggestion, but if a magical AOE drops an ice storm or a fireball on him, why should he get advantage? Jack’s rebuttal: idk i’d def argue it’s magic fire.

To the beloved Crit Justices and the bathtub baby baliff jonk, I bring you the case of the straw the broke the camels back. I am the camel, I ran a 2 year long campaign on Roll 20 once covid started with my sister, her now ex fiance, and two of their friends, to keep it short after months of the other two friends canceling last minute, not paying attention, and the constant clash of clans start up sound, I was fed up. I asked my party to please pay attention as I try to incorporate all my players in their world we all created. Finally they reached a mini BBEG with a sword that did psychic damage on a failed wis save. The psychic damage was a flash back to a horrible memory they had from "before the campaign" a way to break up combat and pull some lore for my players. After a 5 min flashback, the play says they weren't paying attention and to say it all again. I lost it. Not verbally, but I proceeded to cut them all down with percision, none were left standing and I ended the campaign right then and there. Was I too harsh? Or could there have been a better way? My sister still talks about the massacre to this day but was also glad to be done with the other players. I am at the mercy of the court, Crit on your homework kids

To the magnificent judges and bailiff, i bring to you the case of "my players keep razzing me about level ups." If i am ever so slightly late to our online sessions (which includes basically me not being first into the call) my players yell that theyre level 69 in every class and subclass. They also ask me for level ups almost every session (they leveled up and fought one (1) monster of a slightly higher CR than them and they were like "we get a level up right we go from level 4 to level 5 right are we level 7 now omg we're totally level 10 we gotta be"). Do I have any recourse?

I throw myself before the church as I believe Dice Christ has forsaken me. In our recent DnD campaign, one of our players was being sent solo into a battle royale. In order to involve the rest of the group, the DM assigned us different creatures for us to play, and I was given a Young Christaline Dragon. Awesome right? Well, it would’ve been except I was swallowed in the first round by a home brewed Scavver and I spent the next several rounds rolling attacks at disadvantage which included FIVE unusable natural 20s. Natural 20s at as a dragon. I wept. When I finally escaped, I cast hypnotic pattern- everyone passed and the barbarian was raging so there was no effect. I died next turn with my group chanting worst dragon ever. I beg thee to absolve my dnd heart and to please forgive me for whatever sins I may have committed to deserve such a humiliating (albeit hysterical) fate.

TO HIS HONORABLE BAILIFF JAKE, KEEPER OF THE COURT AND GUARDIAN OF THE CRIT, May this letter find you amidst rolling triumphs and fair rulings. I come before the Supreme Crit a shaken Dungeon Master—one whose world was sundered not by dragon’s fire, but by a player’s despair. Picture, if you will: Our table—once alight with laughter, fate, and fine snacks—fell silent as my Revenant Barbarian declared his intention to unmake himself. He had suffered a grim revelation about his family, and in his torment decided that death—again—was the answer. No discussion. No warning. Only the sudden, jarring edge of self-inflicted oblivion, thrust into our story like a jagged dagger. I, your humble storyteller, tried to intercede: rolling checks, offering chances, weaving reasons to stay the hand. The dice became desperate prayers—Insight, Persuasion, even sheer Will. The rest of the party rose, contesting his despair with their own rolls, pleading with the fates. By miracle of number and friendship, they stayed his blade. But the shock remained. For outside the game, I too have walked the long shadow of loss. The echoes of his act, meant perhaps as character flavor or moment of pathos, struck me like a ghost from my own grief. What began as fiction became far too real. And so, in the next session, I meted justice not from cruelty, but necessity. The Barbarian fell in battle, slain not by my wrath, but by the story’s equilibrium. Death lingered for several sessions—a somber silence in the narrative—before redemption at last restored him. Let it be known, Bailiff Jake, that this was not vengeance, but a restoration of order. That our table, wounded though it was, found a path back to balance and meaning. I beseech the Court to recognize: That the Dungeon Master, though wielding gods and monsters, is still mortal of heart. That players’ choices can wound beyond the gameboard. That consequence, rightly delivered, may sometimes heal what chaos has torn. I submit this case not for punishment, but for empathy—to remind all storytellers that our craft is both art and intimacy, and that even behind the screen, we bleed. May the Supreme Crit rule with mercy and narrative symmetry. Respectfully submitted under candlelight and clattering dice, 🕯️ The Dungeon Master Aggrieved Keeper of the Hollow Table, Witness of the Barbarian’s Folly

May it please the court and sure i guess why not jake. My level 15 players fought Zariel and 3 pit fiends on Avernus last session. It was super fun and intense, the artificer casted Resilient Sphere on Zariel, she failed the save (i forgot to use a legendary resistance, whoops.) she watched helplessly as her pit fiends were killed. I later realized that Zariel had the ability to teleport. The resilient sphere says no spells can go in or out but didnt specify about abilities. we all had a conversation about weather a teleport ability would get her out of the bubble and ended up deciding this time it wouldn't work but in the future it would be addressed, I ask the crit, should a non spell teleport allow a creature to leave a Resilient Sphere? I await your judgement.

The Case of the Failed Plane Shift: Hello Honorable Judges and Little Buddy Babyliff, I played in a campaign where the premise was essentially villainous Hogwarts- complete with house ghosts, house parties, and teachers and students who sought eachothers' downfall in an effort to create the most dastardly beings possible. By order of the school's headmaster, myself and another PC were put in a situation where we were told to fight to the death as a cliffhanger before our next session. I told my DM between sessions that I was planning to escape to the Astral plane to avoid the combat altogether since as a player and a character I was uncomfortable with PvP. I was fine playing a new character, and I even prepped a backup baddie. I looted the school's magical items, said my goodbyes to my closest friends and other PCs, and used a portable hole with a bag of holding to launch myself into the Astral plane with the intention of becoming a planar pirate. My DM said after 6 hours had passed in the material plane, I appeared back in the same spot from where I had left. Since our game was streamed live, I didn't want to fight about character motivation in the moment as to why I would want to return even though it felt contradictory to what we had discussed. In the end, the duel took place and both PC's wound up dead as the victor of the fight was hit by a power word kill by the school's headmaster. Both bodies were tossed into lava destroying any chance of revivify along with all of our magic items. I ask you, was I wrong for trying to avoid the combat? Should I have accepted the PvP and put my feelings as a player/friend aside in an "evil" campaign? P.S. the DM's wife who played with us told me he had said the session before that the other PC involved and myself "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision.

I write to you and the Church of Dice Christ today, not for absolution but for an opinion as to whether we will be committing a sin. My fiance and I get married on the 25th of this month and since we met playing D&D we wanted to involve dice in our wedding in some way. We decided, since our dinner will be a buffet service, to have each table roll to for "initiative" to see who will get to go to the buffet line first. I said that since it is our wedding we can say that we rolled a "Nat 20" and get to go first and then go down the initiative. My fiance said that would be cheating and a sin in the eyes of Dice Christ and curse our marriage. So, we come to you on this day to ask - would it be starting our wedding off on the wrong foot if we claim the front of the line with a "we got married so that's basically a 20" lie? Thank you and may dice christ bless you <3

May it please the court and mildly irk the bailiff: I play a halfling monk named Muggsy who is an aspiring young boxing champion with a mild to moderate case of CTE. Muggsy has always worn a set of diamond grilles he acquired through glory. Mechanically, the grilles do nothing but Muggsy tries his best to look tough and rich by flashing them all the time. Many sessions later, we were in a tough battle when a hefty stone was flung at Muggsy. I countered it using his deflect missiles monk ability to reduce the damage. For flavor, instead of trying to catch the rock, I figured it would be more fitting if Muggsy just took it right in the face like any good boxer would.  I was able to reduce the damage to zero. However, the DM made me roll a luck check to see how my grilles held up against the direct hit to my mouth. I rolled a 1 - no problem, with my halfling luck, I'll just reroll. But the unthinkable happened - I rolled a second, devastating 1. The DM informed me that my prized grilles were shattered and tumbled out of my mouth. I argued that this was out of line - Muggsy shouldn't lose his iconic jewels because of the flavor I added to how the missile was deflected (successfully, I might add). Had I not said anything, Muggsy's grilles would certainly be untouched. Eventually I relented. So I humbly ask the court: Do I have a legitimate grievance with the DM in that he punished my flavorful role playing by taking my favorite toy? Or is it fair that he countered flavor with more flavor, and I need to find a way to recover? I await your judgment. PS - sometime later, Muggsy was able to acquire new and expensive diamond grilles so he has his swagger back. However, unbeknownst to him, they are in fact made of cubic zirconium.

To the honorable justices and i feel like I'm forgetting someone, but I'm not sure who, I present the case of the character John Doe. Several years ago I joined my friends' campaign for several sessions. Going into the adventure I knew it was a more gritty, hard core campaign. The DM told me they needed a tank so I built one. Within the first hour of playing my character was focused by the enemies and killed. I was fairly sad but he said I could make a new character. I spent the next hour making another character while everyone else kept playing. My new character was introduced, and then shortly after focused and killed in combat again. I quickly made a 3rd character, as simple as possible, named John Doe in 10 minutes, and asked to rejoin the party. My DM wasn't super happy with my character choices, and the session ended with John's death. I did not rejoin the campaign. Was I wrong for making such a generic character and disrespecting this hard core campaign or was my DM wrong for killing me three times in an afternoon?

Hey justices! My name is Ashley A. and I’m pretty new to NADDPOD. I’ve been really loving the curse of Strahd episodes. The campaign reminded me of an argument I got into at a D&D game in college, and I was hoping you could relitigate it. The game I was playing in was a modern take on Curse of Strahd, where the cities were super modern with cars/electricity/etc but the story was the same. One of the players was playing a man from West Virginia who lived in a mobile home. The DM let use his mobile home as a mount initially, but took it away after he started claiming that because it was his own private domicile, a vampire could not enter. He became frustrated and left the campaign, and I did actually find out afterward that that guy did actually live in a mobile home. Obviously it makes the game less fun, but by the letter of the law, was he right? Thanks, ps Which NADDPOD campaign do you guys think I should I listen to first? 1, 2, or 3.

To the honorable justices and Amir: I present to you the case of the premeditated total party kill. Years ago, I was in a campaign in which I played a wild magic sorcerer who had a past as a con artist and had a fun New Jersey accent. She had a relatively goofy tone that the DM role played with me to establish and, overall, the entire party would joke quite a bit during sessions. After several sessions of us continuing this vibe, the DM then asked us to take on a more serious tone because they weren’t having as much fun. I was confused, but tried to do so and had some beautiful moments with some NPCs. However, it seemed that every time I or any of the other party members made a joke to provide levity, the DM seemed to get more and more irritated, resulting at some points in them snapping at us. It all came to a head when the TPK occurred, where the paladin, a close friend of the DM and the only healer of the party, essentially refused to heal us even after all the other party members went down. I believe there was collusion among the paladin and the DM to kill our characters. So I ask justices, was this premeditated murder as I suspect? And if so, was it justified because we couldn’t adapt to the tone in which the DM wanted? I humbly await the courts judgement

Wise servants of Dice Christ, I come to you with a dire confession. It has been 3 days since my last sin, and I fear I may be forced to sin again this week. I work at a Library, running a 6 Week mini campaign for paying members of the public. My latest group of players are slightly more experienced than previous groups, and are considerably more efficient than expected. They ended up fighting, and beating, the campaigns final boss 3 weeks into the 6 week series, leaving me to scramble for padding and extra plot to give them the rest of the campaign they had paid for. I have had to pull every immoral trick I can think of to slow these players down; extra random encounters, superfluous NPC interactions, improvised side plots with Boss Lieutenants, throwing overpowered loot to distraction them. It's not working. The finale is this Friday, and I fear they may finish the epic last stand 30 minutes into the 2hr session, making me scramble again. I ask forgiveness for this unholy heavy padding I must use.

To the lavender-scented judges and the stinky bailiff Jonk. I bring forth the case of the illiterate pseudodragon. My pact of the chain warlock and party were in a trial that involved stealing an egg guarded by a dragon and her magical wards. For my turn, I had my lovely pseudodragon familiar (who can understand common and draconic) fly to the egg and read the draconic glyphs guarding it, then translate the deets to me via our telepathic bond. My dm ruled that my familiar can’t read because “although it understands draconic, it cannot speak or read”. I lost the argument but have since stayed salty. Judges, am I wrong to be offended on behalf of my son who is a very smart and special boy?! I prostrate myself before your 80 foot tall bench.

Dear Honourable Justices and the bailiff who does their best, I bring the case of Is My Dad A Problem Player? A couple of years back my brother wrote and DMd a one shot for my dad's birthday, and I was one of 4 players. The intro of the session, designed to establish 5e mechanics for those less familiar, was going swimmingly, and his character (an ancient wizard waking from slumber) was introduced at the very moment that his place of rest was disturbed. Thick ice began to melt beneath our feet, releasing trapped fire mephits, and it was a race against time for us to escape the sunken keep and properly begin the quest. The goal of escape was HEAVILY flagged by both DM and players, but my dad('s PC) refused to move from his sleepy position in the centre of a room that was clearly collapsing. We tried to persuade him, we tried tying a rope to him to extract him, we tried everything we could think of, but he insisted on closing the lid on his coffin/bed, and letting it fall to the floor, where he promptly died, requiring us to climb down and revive him. He seemed confused at this result, but we pressed on, steadily making our way through the rest of the session, and rushing through battles and setpieces that would have been much better appreciated. Justices, am I right to be a little upset? I know that the "be grateful that you get to play with your family" precedent likely applies here, but I can't help feeling bad for my brother, who put together an accessible, fun one-shot, only to be left stressed out by a recalcitrant wizard, I await your ruling, Jay

Dearest Dice Christ... DOES SIZE MATTER?!?! I cum to you with an urgent matter requiring your humble judgment. do the dicesciples honor 5% cock?? (Context: it was slightly cocked against the wall and had to be pushed down although slight was pushed down to flat)

To the Golden Gods of the highest council, thy kingdom come, thy crits be done, and (50/50 chance here so I'll say) Amir. I come to you with a cold case from my youth. THE CASE OF THE PRIMATE V SPIDER At age 13, I asked to be in my brother in law's tabletop game with two other (adult) players. It was a magitech setting where our characters were recruited to be apart of a magical syndacit of people who stop evil. My character, Snap Clackers, was a Nature powered monkey who gained his abilities and sentience after being captured and experimented on. Me and the other players got along and played well off of each other and it was shaping up to be a fun campaign. At the end of one of our sessions, the DM (Brother in law) announced excitedly that there would be a guest who would play a villain next session which excited the rest of the table as well. However, me being 13 and getting shit grades on my report card, I was grounded that week and couldn't go to the session. The next session I was filled in by the DM what happened. Apparently, the guest played an evil spider queen who womped the party and demanded they bring her 100 peasants to turn into her spider army. Judges, they agreed to do so. My character, who was present while I the player was not, was made to agree with them. You can see how this would be of big conflict to who my character was and, being new to roleplay, I simply played him dispondant and angry for the rest of the session, going against what the party was trying to do that session. The campaign shortly fizzled out due to other factors outside of anyone's control. Judges, should I have been more malleable with my monkey's morals or was I right to lash out at my party for their decision? (PS. The guest who played the spider queen was my 23 year old sibling. The one who was married to my brother in-law)

Greetings honorable judges aka my favorite millenials, May it please the court and allow me to present the case of level 5 wizard and the challenge rating 28 dragon. I've only recently started playing dnd after consuming dnd content like d20 and naddpod for a while. I found a local board game shop that runs campaigns for people that wants to play and so me and one of my friend joined a table late July this year. We finished an arc during the summer break in which we started both as level 1 characters and took a break before school starts again and begin the next arc. However, because of everyone's class schedules our party was disbanded and we formed another table with other players. At this point my wizard was level 5 and my friend's druid was level 4. Most of our party members are around level 4-6, however two of the pcs were significantly higher level, one of them being a level 11 barbarian and a level 16 barbarian-fighter. It seemed like these were characters they played for a while, so they also had more magic items, buffs, special abilities that they accumulated from previous adventures. We did a session zero to test the chemistry of the party and entered a combat with a wolf, who we're supposed to help free from a curse. One of the barbarian one-shot killed the wolf — who we're definitely NOT supposed to kill — in the first round and attracted a dragon which our dm told us was a challenge rating 28 monster. The dragon immediately did a breath weapon that was impossible for the lower level characters to save without a nat 20 and put us in incredibly low hp. Our level 6 cleric had a teleportation helmet which he used to teleport me, the druid, and the rogue out of the battlefield so we don't die, and teleported back to the combat where the two barbarians were fighting the dragon. The dragon ended up fleeing after two-ish rounds where me and the other players that were teleported out just sat there doing nothing, however because our dm is very strict with xp, the three of us that didn't stay until the end of the fight got significantly less xp compared to the barbarians and the cleric, who was able to go from level 6 to level 9 even though he refused to heal and insisted that he's more of a cleric that "helps people hit" despite being the only healer in the party. I felt very frustrated and like I wasn't having fun, so I touched ends with my friend who went with me and we both felt like this isn't how dnd is supposed to go, as we basically could do jack shit as low level characters. I asked the dm about the situation and said something along the lines of "is this going to be how it goes (a huge level gap between characters, high challenge rating monsters, etc.)" and he replied to me that he had a mechanic for "catching up" level wise that I didn't need to worry about and that "the higher level pcs won't be there every session" (which I'm even more confused because if they're not going to show up regularly what is the point of them being in our party?) Me and my friend are debating leaving this table, especially as she is currently doing an exchange semester abroad and had to wake up super early to be able to play the sessions remotely. What should we do?

Honorable Justices and also jaaake?. Anyway, I bring to you the case of Joel, the coward with a gun I was running a game some friends (3 brand new players, and veteran), and in a small town they came across a local halfling named Joel (inspired by scoutmaster Denny), and convinced him to show them the way to the tower of the wizard they were hunting. On coming to the tower, Joel insisted that he was too scared of the wizard, and that he shouldn’t continue with them, openly admitting his cowardice. The rouge, named Hush Hush Harold, gave Joel an impassioned speech about being courageous, culminating in hush hush Harold handing Joel a revolver, with the words “Joel, you’ll know when the time is right. Do not hesitate to use this on those who oppose you”. So into the tower he went, armed with his shiny new six shooter. Inside, there was a library that was guarded by 2 roaming gelatinous cubes. The party, all passing the save to see the cubes, decided to attempt to stealth past, so I called for initiative to track the encounter. Joel rolled highest. At this point I must clarify, no one made an effort to tell Joel to be stealthy, and none of them spoke in character while the decision was made. I gave the DM wink by saying “are you all sure everyone here understands your plan?” And I was assured that everyone did. At the beginning of Joel’s turn, I had the party roll an intelligence check and a “courage” check for Joel, using his charisma bonus. Judges, Joel got a 2 on his intelligence, and an 18 on his courage. So Joel, seeing an enemy and for the first time in his life having a weapon fight with, stepped out from cover and fired at one of the cubes. Hell broke loose. The table erupted, saying it was an unfair call, and that surely Joel would know better. But judges I argue, is that not what the intelligence check was for, to know if it would be a stupid idea to stand up and fire? Judges, I ask, was this a fair call? Did my players give Joel too much credit, or was Joel finally being courageous for the first time in his life? P.s. in the same encounter, Joel Died, due to being absorbed by a cube while pinned between two bookshelves. The party was distraught, however, I maintain that Joel died an honorable and worthy death. This death also served the purpose of them not keeping Joel the rest of the campaign.

May it please the court and the odious little bailiff, I bring to order the case of the lazy table. For two years I have been DMing a homebrew campaign for a table of six. It is all of our first experience with DnD, and for the most part it has been a wonderful ride, but there’s a huge issue I can’t move past; my players will not learn the rules, and they will not role play. It’s especially strange considering they all tell me and everyone we know how much they love to play, how excited they are for the next session, but their characters have no discernible personality traits, and they don’t speak a word to each other unless it’s to decide what to do or solve a puzzle. Justices, I have to tell them what to add to their roll every single time they roll. No one knows their spells or abilities, and I have to walk them through every step of their turn during every instance of combat. Am I wrong to be upset that my players don’t engage more with the game or spend some of their free time learning the rules while I’ve put in hours of work every week prepping sessions for the last two years? I’ve stopped asking that they try at the risk of coming off as an angry teacher. Please justices, I prostrate myself at the mercy of the court, supine and primed for judgement.

To the judges in their infinite glory and the bailiff in his limited capacity I ask for judgement on the case of “Reasonable Requests” I DM for my 3 friends and when this case came about we had been playing for some 2 years. We played mostly online after work, roughly every other week. The party had been split in a new city because the Rogue wanted to go meet up with his thief friends while the Wizard and the freshly rolled Bard went to a church to do some recon on some holy items they would need to fight a devil that was chasing them, and had recently kidnapped a beloved NPC. Since this was the Bards first time playing a magic user (the player had just sacrificed his first character in an epic last stand to save all his friends and raise an undead army to help in the finale) and we’d just come off of a huge fight last session, I didn’t want to do any combat during the session if possible. So when the wizard and bard went into the church they listened to a sermon about the majesty of these 3 magic items wielded by grand heroes, and how they were laid to rest here at the church as holy relics. They went to talk to the cleric running the sermon after and she showed them the cases holding the items. The wizard then cast mass suggestion and said “give me those”. Above the table I told him that the wording of the spell says you specifically have to make it a reasonable request so what exactly do you want to say? He responded “I tell her ‘give me those’”. I told him that “give me those” was a strange request for 2 complete strangers to ask of this holy woman, so she wouldn’t immediately just hand them over but instead the spell would make her more willing to help and she gave them her signature on a paper and told them that if they showed that to the king he could give them an audience and could be persuaded to allow them to take the holy relics. (This was a way to allow the players to regroup and would let them meet the kings court which had some people who were important to the wizards backstory although he didn’t know that yet.) The wizard argued this was his first 6th level spell and since the spell worked on 12 people it should be 12 times as effective on 1 person which I disagreed with and said if he wanted to cast regular suggestion that could work but short of dominate person you weren’t going to make someone give you holy relics. The Bard then said that I was taking the fun out of it, and the wizard said he cast cone of cold on the cleric. I stopped everything there and we talked about everything and continued on later, but I’m curious. Judges was I taking the fun out of the wizards spells? Or did my players overreact to my table rulings? We still play to this day and we completed that campaign nearly 3 years ago now, but it still bothers me sometimes.

To the Hallux Jake and the Judges, I bring the case of the humbled cleric. I was DMing LMoP and the party was almost to the BBEG. The cleric asked for a Talisman of Pure Good, that would basically insta-kill any evil aligned character if it failed a save. I said I was fine with them having it as long as it wasn’t used on the BBEG. They agreed. The party busts into the BBEG’s room and the cleric uses the amulet and insta-kills the BBEG. I could tell the rest of the party was upset, so behind the screen I changed the character that died to a doppleganger that was supposed to be part of the fight. Once the party says the BBEG again, the cleric was pissed and the party was ecstatic. Should I have allowed the cleric to have their kill or did I save the fight?

May it please the grand and wise justices of The Supreme Crit and their bailiff of whose attributes are in constant flux of question, I bring to you an appeal from my local crit system. I play Gwyntrag, a flaming boar riding goblin cavalier fighter, in a 5 player rotating DM campaign where we pass off the story to each other each session (with occasional exceptions). Details of how this works aside, this means that mechanical rulings are discussed as a group. My appeal today is on a ruling made about the +2 flaming lance Gwyntrag uses as his main weapon and the piercer feat. I argue that as per RAW I should be allowed to use the reroll ability provided by piercer on one of the fire damage die if I want to. All four of my co-DMs have ruled against me saying that only piercing damage can be rerolled. But Judges, the rules says attack's damage dice! Certainly this feat was written with spells like Green Flame Blade and such in mind. I graciously await your ruling on this matter. If there was any questions on how a 5 person rotating DM campaign works: We all created the world together by playing the world building game The Quiet Year (I think we played the game twice through). This was a great way to collectively build a history and have everybody have investment and agency in the world. We rotate in the same order each time but have swapped around if needed like somebody has a busy month coming up or hasn't an idea where to take the story. Usually you're sandwiched between the same two people and bounce plot ideas around with them 1 on 1 which makes transitioning sessions easier. After several rotations we'll play some of the world building game to make sure the parts that weren't actively having story with our PCs are still developing. We also decided that if you nat 20 on any intelligence check out get to add something to the world, veto powers are in play though. Definitely need the right group of people but it's a lot of fun.

To the Noble Clergy of Dice Christ! i come before yall not with a confession, but with a question because no matter what you decide im still gonna keep doing it. So i have a pretty common learning disability; dyscalculia which makes even the simplest of math problems embarrassingly difficult to figure out especially during something you wanna keep fast paced like combat. Im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can often go through whole sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice and do the math. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice? or am i just being blessed by dice christ through the power of the internet? or have i finally killed god with my machine? ps hate the show and ive never listened to it and if i did, it probably wouldn’t help me laugh when im at my lowest

Greetings Judges and Bailiff, I humbly present the Case of the Unlucky TRex. In a game of Curse of Strahd that I DMed, my players were in THE Battle with Strahd at the end of the game. The druid of my party polymorphed themselves into a TRex after being knocked out of their last wildshape. The next round, they tried to attack Strahd's coffin, which we had established as having a higher than typical AC for coffins because it was Strahd's coffin. They missed their attacks. The player then asked if they could use a Luck point to reroll. I originally said no because TRexes don't have luck points. After some debating back and forth between the other players and myself, we left it to Dice Christ to see if they could. Dice Christ decided no, and combat continued. My players made it out alive, but are still bitter with me for not allowing it. I feel allowing Dice Christ to decide was more than generous. My question is this: would a character who is polymorphed have access to Luck points (or other feats) in the polymorphed form? I await your judgment, and may Dice Christ save me if I have wronged my players.

To the magnanimous justices and the kinda cute bailiff haha Jk. Unless? I present the case of the mildly moist fire. Years ago my group started the Elemental Evil campaign and after a few months of playing, fizzled out because life got busy. A couple years later we decided to restart the campaign with new characters and all agreed we would build our own characters around specific elements. I made a Triton Sorcerer who had all ice and water spells so I can be specifically useful against fire. A few levels in we entered an area where we encounter 2 greater fire elementals in an enclosed room. Our dm warned us before we entered this area that we were not supposed to be here yet and that it would be extremely difficult to make it through. We agreed and went in anyway. On my turn I cast the Tidal Wave spell which hit both elementals. After calculating the bludgeoning damage I asked if they take any extra damage from water which upon my DM checking, confirmed they do. They take 3 cold damage for every gallon of water splashed on them. There was a lot of arguing about how much water would actually be considered splashed on the fire elementals as the wave would technically fully engulf them. There was also the argument that magical water was not the same as normal water. After multiple online searches online with no Official™️ answers, my dm ruled that they only took 4 extra cold damage. They proceeded to whomp our entire party on the next turn and instead of being killed we were all imprisoned by cultists. Here the kicker. In the prison we encountered our previous characters from our first party to which our dm pulled out our old character sheets and declared we would play as those characters for the break out. After the break out we were given the option to either stay as our new character or play as our old character. So Justice’s, I ask, was I wrong to be upset that the specific strength I built my character around was stolen from me for my dms clever twist?

To the principled judges and the putrid bailiff, Gustin: A few years back I ran a Curse of Strahd campaign for some friends where I tried my damndest to get at least one player to betray the party. Being the seductive DM that I am, one PC actually took the bait. The barbarian of the party, Mashi, accepted the dark gift of vampirism. At the time, my group followed a rule that so long as only one player was missing from the table, we would continue the session without them (5 player total). The session following Mashi’s infection, their player could not make it. I hadn’t planned for the infection to take hold quickly, so I expected Mashi to be around for at least a few more sessions. Honorable judges, the other party members IMMEDIATELY began scrutinizing Mashi at the beginning of the session. I, not wanting to fully roleplay a critical movement for one of my player’s, had Mashi run away and hide. The party pursued. Relentlessly. I was forced to play as Mashi, being berated by all of the party, before ultimately being told to leave and never come back. I tried to draw out the situation long enough for it to pick up in the next session, but the party would not back down, and Mashi’s player started next week with a new character sheet. Judges, wtf? Luckily we’re are all friends at the table, all though, I do still get razzed on occasion for allowing a player to miss such a crucial character moment.

Dear for the most part honorable judges, and the somewhat honorable baliff, I present would like to present you with the “The Case of the Unused Subclass” I was running my second campaign ever, the “Dragon Heist” module, with my first campaign being the “Out of the Abyss” module that deals with Demons, and the Underdark. My player came up to me, and said that he wanted to play a Drow Druid that was somewhat corrupted by demonic powers during the events of the first campaign. I thought that sounded great, and was even game when he asked if I could make a homebrew subclass that would help him be a melee combat as opposed to ranged spell casting. I was excited, and got to work, I will include the subclass at the bottom of this message. We worked together, and both were happy with what we came up with. Judges, I kid you not, through the entire 30 sessions we played, this player did not use a single subclass feature. Not one. Not even the extra attack feature I gifted him at level 6. The game itself was actually fine, and it ended very successfully, but sometimes I think about the fact that I spent significant time making a subclass to fit my players wishes, and he ended up doing nothing with it. I will admit, I never followed up with my player to make sure things were ok, but he also never came to me to ask for changes. So Judges, did I give a bad subclass, or did I just have an ingrate for a player? ———————— Circle of Viciousness- Tathnar Druid Subclass 2nd level feature; Vicious Curse - When you choose this subclass at 2nd level you gain proficiency with martial weapons In addition, your strikes have the power to further weaken your opponents. When you hit with a melee weapon attack, you can expend a use of your wildshape to cause one of the following effects: 1)The target makes a Charisma saving throw. On a failure, The target has disadvantage on all saving throws. At the end of each of its turns, the creature rolls a Charisma saving throw. On a success this effect ends 2)The target makes a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, the target gains vulnerablility to a damage type of your choice. If the creature is resistant to the chosen damage type, it loses that resistance. This trait does not function if the target is immune to the chosen damage type. This effect ends when the target takes any amount of the chosen damage type. 3)The target makes a Constitution Saving throw.On a failure, at the start of each of its turns, the target takes 1d6 necrotic damage, as your curse ravages its body. This lasts for 1 minute, or untill the creature recives magical healing. While this curse is active, you gain an amount of hit points equal to necrotic damage dealt by this curse. 6th level feature; Extra attack. You can attack twice instead of once when you take the attack action. 10th level feature; Bulwark against Brutality. You gain resistance to Fire, Cold, and Lightning damages. 14th level feature; Living Weapon. As an action, you can expend both of your Wildshapes to become a Living Weapon for 1 minute. While in this state, you gain a +5 to attack and damage rolls using a melee weapon, and you can cast cantrips as a bonus action. Additionally, you score a critical hit with a melee weapon on a roll of 18-20. Additionally, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon, you regain one use of your Wildshape.

A firm and respectful handshake to the sedulous judges and a seated finger grab handshake to the skylarking bailiff I’m running a new campaign for two of my lifelong best friends (small group, I know). The premise is that rift-filled tempests have been plaguing the world ever since a god died. One player is a wall guard for a small city, and the other is a farmer who left home looking for adventure. Session one started with a tense scene: the farmer sprinting for the city gates while fiends closed in, and the wall guard making sure the gate didn’t shut before he made it through. It was a great way to kick things off and get them invested. After some downtime and RP, I gave them the call to adventure, pretty standard stuff. The duke needed brave souls to enter the storm and investigate its source. Both players flat-out refused. Caught off guard and not great at improvising, I panicked a bit. After a long rest, I told them a royal decree had gone out: not enough volunteers had come forward, so the city’s wall guard (one PC) was being forced into the mission. That got one of them moving. The other still refused, so I started playing a bunch of NPCs, begging, pleading, guilting him into going. Eventually, he relented, but afterward they gave me a hard time for “railroading” them. So here’s my question: should I have just let them walk away and scrapped the session I planned, possibly spending hours rewriting everything? Or at some point, is it fair to expect the players to take the hook and go on the adventure?

Oh beloved Cardinals of the Crit, I lay before you, perhaps not a sin most foul, but a sin nonetheless Allow me to paint you a picture. My players were in an underground dungeon filled with demons, and fairly low on resources. While in this state, they came upon 2 demons eating the body of a third. The group decided to sneak past the demons to avoid a fight. I had them all roll stealth checks one by one, and lo and behold, they all succeeded. However, as the characters were celebrating their victory, the Dark Elf rogue then said, “I turn back and go to fight the demons” All of the other characters were incensed, and tried to stop him. It soon became clear though, that for some inexplicable reason, this Dark Elf Rogue would not be deterred. It was then that the Tabaxi Wizard cast “Sleep” on the Dark Elf. My Cardinals of the Crit, it is importantly to know here, that Elves are immune to magical sleep. Here lies my sin. I forgot this fact The Wizard rolled high enough to put the Rogue to sleep. Instead of carrying his unconscious body, the group decided to leave the body there, and sneak away. Because Sleep lasts for 1 minute, and because the demons were so close to the body, I had the demons roll perception checks every round to see if they noticed the rogues body. Which they did. The demons then jumped at the body, and proceeded to kill this rogue. I did not realize my mistake until 1 session later, and still feel bad about it. So, Cardinals? Am I still worthy of Dice Christs love? Ps. This rogue was 3rd character of this player, and eventually ended the campaign with a total of 6 characters, all of which died, the 6th one being introduced 2 sessions before the final battle of the campaign

Sup judges, 'sup bailiff 😎 After asking a powerful npc ally for "tangible boons', our party received custom magic items, each designed to upgrade a specific class feature. My level 18 divine soul sorcerer received an item that allows him to upgrade his Twinned Spell meta magic option to Tripled Spell. Instead of targeting an extra creature for a number of sorcery points equal to a spells level, i can now target 3 creatures for the cost of double the spells level. Oh and I take 1D10 for each sorcery point spent. This means that were i to cast haste on my three other party members, i would take 6D10 - which is potentially half of total hp (112hp). When i mentioned that was a huge amount of damage, my party members replied with "you got heals though". Tripled spell is an amazing ability, but i feel like the cost is too high for it to ever be worth using. Judges, am i wrong, or did my DM balance this item fairly?

To the honorable justices and I guess also Murph’s DMPC “Jaek.” I present to you the case of the Difficult Druid and the Bleeding Bard. I have been in a campaign for nearly four years with four level 9 PCs: a wizard, a monk, a druid, and me, a bard. We are all great friends and there is no bad blood here. Anyway, our dragonborn druid refuses to wild shape, and instead hangs back to use her acid breath or the spell Wind Wall. ONLY Wind Wall, every time. The DM home-brewed an ability for her to wild shape into a young dragon, which she has only used twice since getting it two years ago. As the only PC up in the mix, I get absolutely rocked. The wizard takes hits so I don’t have to, and the monk has stopped using evasion. To add insult to injury, we all watched the DND movie together and when the druid in the movie wild shaped, our druid said, “that’s so cool, I wish we had someone who can do that,” to which I responded, “you can turn into a fucking bear.” I prostrate myself before the court and ask if we should get over our tank not tanking or if we should trap our tank in a wild shape a la Tobias from Animorphs. P.S. don’t play, hate the show